Security / Defense

Research Interest

Antonio Chavez-Askew

Undergraduate Student
Political Science

Antonio is a senior majoring in Political Science, he currently has a completed subfield in American Government and International Relations. His research interests include migration policy, military affairs, and post colonial politics.

Matthew Specter

Senior Fellow
Institute of European Studies

Matthew Specter (PhD, Duke) writes on 20th century European, American and global intellectual history, especially the history of German political thought and the history of IR theory. A former tenured Associate Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University, he is currently a Lecturer in History at Santa Clara University and Associate Editor of History and Theory. He is the author of Habermas: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge 2010) and The Atlantic Realists: Empire and International Political Thought Between Germany and...

Julia Tjan

Undergraduate Student
Political Economy
Goldman School of Public Policy

Julia Tjan is a third year student from the East Bay Area majoring in Political Economy with a concentration in International Trade & Development and minoring in Public Policy. She has served as a Research Assistant for Dr. Aila Matanock’s Constitutions Project sponsored by the Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative on the legal framework of security institutions and violent instability in developing countries for over a year. Currently, she is a Business and Economic Consulting intern at SGI LLC., a DC firm that specializes in environmental sustainability and evolutionary economic...

Tanya Tandon

Undergraduate Student
Political Science
Goldman School of Public Policy

Tanya Tandon is a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and double minoring in Public Policy and Human Rights. On campus, Tanya served as the President of the Association for Socially Responsible Business. Before coming to UC Berkeley, Tandon worked in the nonprofit sector at RESULTS in advocacy and legislative work. Her previous experience focused on international sustainable development with the US Green Chamber of Commerce, as well as inclusive sustainable tourism and CSR at Taj Indian Hotels Company Limited in Mumbai through...

Mariano Sigifredo

Undergraduate Student
Political Science
Goldman School of Public Policy

Mariano is an Argentinian senior student pursuing a B.A. in Political Science, with a concentration in comparative politics and the political economy of development, with a minor in Public Policy. He is interested in the distribute effects of fiscal rents in developing countries and the politics of economic development. He worked as a research assistant and a “Summer Research Fellow” on projects of international security and post-conflict contexts in Latin America. He has been working on an Honors thesis that seeks to analyze the impact of the variation of subnational regime types in...

Emma Zazueta Lachenaud

Undergraduate Student
Political Economy

Emma Zazueta Lachenaud is a third-year international student at Cal studying Political Economy with a concentration in Economic Development with Econometrics. She has also completed the Haas School of Business intense summer Business for Arts, Sciences and Engineering program. Her interests include comparative politics and diplomacy, economics, international security, and how these fields intersect. Zazueta Lachenaud interned at the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament in Panama, where she conducted research and learned about the diplomatic and parliamentary field. At Berkeley, Zazueta...

Levi Vonk

Graduate Student
Anthropology

Levi Vonk is a PhD candidate in the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco. His ethnographic research focuses on Central American migration through Mexico, with particular attention paid to how the migrant experience is explained in terms of violence, multiculturalism, asylum, and border externalization and militarization. His first book, which follows the journey of an undocumented migrant hacker, will be published by Bold Type Books (Hachette) in Spring 2022.

Vonk is the recipient of the 2021 IIS...

Mark Danner

Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education
Graduate School of Journalism
English

Mark Danner is longtime journalist and writer who holds the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Berkeley, teaching in both the Graduate School of Journalism and the Department of English. He writes about political violence, war, and American politics, mostly for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, and teaches courses in foreign and war reporting and the realist and modernist novel.

Rafi Lazerson

Graduate Student
Goldman School of Public Policy

Rafi Lazerson is an MPA candidate at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. His policy focus is on interdisciplinary evidence-based approaches to address extremist disinformation online and related security threats. Rafi has several years of professional experience in research-solutions, advocacy, organization leadership, project management, and partnership-facilitation. He received a BA in Political Science from the Brooklyn College Scholars Program.

Daniel J. Sargent

Associate Professor
History
Goldman School of Public Policy
Daniel J. Sargent is associate professor at the University of California, where he is jointly appointed in the Department of History and the Goldman School of Public Policy. He is a historian who specializes in U.S. foreign policy and the history of international relations. His research has explored how states and decision makers adapt to long-term changes in their international environments, including the historical advance of globalization. He is presently interested in how the United States has strived, over the long arc of its history, to constitute and sustain international order,...