Teaching is enormously important to me, and I have been very fortunate to teach and mentor many remarkable undergraduate and graduate students at the UW-Madison and now at UC-Berkeley.
My undergraduate courses include the Comparative Study of Genocide, the Politics of Human Rights, and intend to design courses on post-conflict societies and African politics. I previously taught the Introduction to International Studies (IS 101) at UW-Madison. My graduate courses include Political Violence and a new course on Concepts and Measurement, taught in Fall 2022. I have previously taught graduate courses on African Politics, Human Rights, and dissertation proposal writing.
I have served as the advisor to about 20 undergraduate senior theses, ranging on topics from the concept of genocide to internal displacement in Uganda to child soldiering to youth protests in Mali to mass killing under the Soviets. I have been honored that seven students with whom I have worked have won the best undergraduate thesis prize in Political Science during the past 15 years (at UW-Madison).
Regarding graduate advising, this is my updated mentor-mentee commitment. Many of my advisees have written (or are writing) remarkable theses, and I have been thrilled when some of these have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Gabriel Almond Award (Rachel Schwartz), Best Fieldwork Award (Kathleen Klaus, Nick Barnes, and Barry Driscoll), Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award (Nick Barnes), and Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation in African Politics (Kathleen Klaus).
I have been deeply honored to receive the campus-wide William Kiekhofer Teaching Award in 2009, a Distinguished Honors Faculty Award in 2015, and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award in 2018, all at UW-Madison. I will continue to strive to bring energy, passion, curiosity, and empathy to the classroom.