Global / Transnational

Research Interest

Ishana Ratan

Graduate Student
Political Science

Ishana Ratan is a third year graduate student in the Political Science Department at the Univeristy of California, Berkeley, with a focus on international political economy. Her current research interests include the politics of renewable energy technology policy adoption in middle income countries. She also serves as a Project Director at the Berkeley APEC Study Center, Prior to pursuing graduate studies, she worked as an international trade paralegal, which greatly inspired her interest in trade, technology, and strategic competition in the global marketplace.

Blaze Joel

Graduate Student
History

Blaze Joel is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on nationalism, memory, violence, and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. He studies these issues in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country, as well as in an international, trans-European framework. He also studies the Cold War in a global perspective.

Oren Samet

Graduate Student
Political Science

Oren Samet is pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics and comparative democratization, with a particular focus on political transitions, parties, and elections in Southeast Asia. Before coming to Berkeley, he worked in various roles for non-governmental organizations in Thailand, including as Research and Advocacy Director for ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a network of regional legislators.

Emily Fjaellen Thompson

Graduate Student
Anthropology

Emily Fjaellen Thompson is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her bachelor's degree in Latin American and Latino/a Studies from Vassar College, where she was awarded the Burnam Fellowship for work on the U.S.-Mexico border with unaccompanied minors seeking asylum and the Cornelisen Fellowship for extended fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes.

Matthew Kovac

Graduate Student
History

Matthew Kovac is  PhD student in History at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research focuses on the Irish republican movement, decolonization, and the Global Cold War. 

Kovac is the recipient of the 2021 IIS Pre-Dissertation Research Grant.

Jennie Barker

Graduate Student
Political Science

Jennie Barker is a Ph.D. student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies international influences on democratization. Her current research examines recipient government behavior toward democracy assistance. Prior to coming to UC Berkeley, Barker worked at the National Endowment for Democracy and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Germany. 

Barker is also a recipient of the 2021 IIS Pre-Disseration Research Fellowship.

Matthew Stenberg

Graduate Student
Political Science

Matthew Stenberg is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Central Europe and the European Union. His research interests include democratic backsliding, local politics, and multilevel party politics.

Tara Chandra

Graduate Student
Political Science

Tara Chandra is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on gender and international security, particularly why and how insurgents target women. She is also interested in the causes and consequences of political violence more generally across different contexts.

Robert Powell

Professor
Political Science

Robert Powell is the Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and won the National Academy of Science’s prize for behavior research relevant to the prevention of nuclear war. Prof. Powell studies war and the politics of weakly institutionalized states, and specializes in game-theoretic approaches to international conflict.

Vanessa Ogle

Associate Professor
History

Vanessa Ogle is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been presented with a number of awards for her first book The Global Transformation of Time: 1870–1950 and currently working on a project titled Archipelago Capitalism: A History of the Offshore World, 1920s-1980s. Prof. Ogle studies global Europe from the 18th century to the present, focusing on the history of capitalism, economic history, and empire in global perspective.