PSGSC News

Here you can find information on what the graduate students in the Political Science Department at UF are up to. Conference presentations, publications, awards won and other general news are listed below.


October 22, 2009:

Will Hicks presented an invited paper with Prof. Dan Smith entitled, "Do Parties Matter? Legislative Productivity in the States," at John Green's triennial "The State of the Parties: 2008 and Beyond" conference in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on October 16.

Ty Solomon published a guest op-ed with Prof. Ido Oren for Informed Comment entitled "Duelfer 5 Years Later: Words of Mass Distraction."

Donald Campbell has been appointed as Reporter of the Mississippi Code of Judicial Conduct Study Committee. He also presented "Civility is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself:  The Need for a Mythology of Civility" at the Faculty Forum of Mississippi Law School, and will present  "The Need for a Myth of Civility" at the Central States Law School Association Conference at Capital Law School (Columbus, OH) on October 23. Finally, Donald had an article published in the Mississippi College Law Review: "Should the Rooster Guard the Henhouse: A Critical Analysis of Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980," 28 Miss. Coll. L. Rev. 381 (2009).

Keith Weghorst was one of four U.S.-based graduate students selected to participate in the 2009 Africa Workshop, "Elections and Democracy," offered in partnership with the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon.


July 26, 2009:

Hans Schmeisser won a grant to research and write a case study for the Graham Center.

Sean Walsh published a review of The Truth About Leo Strauss by Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 62:4 (June 2009) pp. 954-956.


June 25, 2009:

Congratulations to Iran Rodrigues for receiving an NSF grant from the Law and Social Science Program to support his doctoral dissertation research, “Do Courts Matter? Institutional Arrangements, Judicial Impact and the Attitude of Brazilian Federal Agencies Toward Court Decisions."


May 5, 2009:

The Call for Proposals for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association is now posted. The deadline for proposals is August 5, 2009, and the conference will be held January 7-9, 2010, in Atlanta. (SPSA returns to New Orleans in 2011.) SPSA has travel grants for graduate students to help defray the cost of attendance. Applications for these grants open in October and are filled as they come in. Applicants must be on the program.

Donald Campbell won First Year Professor of the Year at the Mississippi College of Law. The award is voted on by the students who are in their first year of law school.

Magda Giurcanu won a course development grant from the Center for European Studies (graduate competition) to develop a new course for Spring 2010, "Elections and Public Opinion in the EU." For dissertation fieldwork, she won two grants: Center for European Studies travel grant ($850) and Ruth McQuown Scholarship Award for Outstanding Female Students, from CLAS, ($5000). Finally, she was selected to participate in "Comparative Perspectives on Federalism and Separation of Powers," an SIAS summer institute. The program will run in Berlin (July 2009), and Ann Arbor, Michigan (Summer 2010).

Congratulations to Winifred Pankani for winning the Barbara Roth Memorial Award.

Marissa Silber’s paper entitled “Is Time on Their Side? Understanding the Relationship between Presidents and the House of Representatives over Time” was selected as the Best Graduate Student Paper presented at the 2008 Florida Political Science Association annual meeting. She originally wrote the paper for Ken Wald's seminar on Empirical Political Research. Congrats, Marissa!


April 18, 2009:

Florida Political Science Association Conference Presentations

Paulina Rippere, "Talking Strategy: Agenda Manipulation and the Battle for Power in Congress"

Wendy Whitman, "Presidential Success in US Space Policy"


April 2-5, 2009:

Midwest Political Science Association Conference Presentations

Dan Cicenia, "Surviving Legislative Deadlock: The 17th Amendment and Institutional Change in the US Senate"

Cara Hauck, "Africa's Missing Separatists: Explaining the Rarity of Self-Determination Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa"

Jordan Ragusa, "Coordination and Partisanship in Modern Conference Committees"

Iran Rodrigues, "Calling upon the Higher Court: Executive's Agenda Power and the Use of Federal Courts in Local Dispute Resolution across Brazilian Federal System"

Hans Schmeisser, "From Virtue to Vice: Smithian Ethic and Contemporary American Culture"

Marissa Silber, "A Response to Failed Implementation: Why No Child Left Behind Has Not Been Reauthorized"


March 26, 2009:

Lance Bardsley has been selected as a Hansard Research Scholar and will be assigned to work with a member of parliament during the upcoming summer session. Lance is an ABD student currently completing a dissertation on "The Politics of Devolution in Wales and Scotland" under the direction of Larry Dodd (Chair) and Beth Rosenson (Co-chair). Lance is an Assistant Professor at Gainesville State College in Georgia. The position as Hansard Research Scholar will provide him access to interviewees and archives in order to finish his dissertation.


March 19, 2009:

Magda Giurcanu is one of the 2 recipients of the 2009 Haas dissertation summer fellowship ($1500), offered by the European Union Studies Association. She will use the grant to spend this summer in Paris and Bucharest. Congrats, Magda!

Kudos to Kuniyuki Nishimura for having successfully defended his dissertation on March 18, 2009. The title of the thesis is “Politics at Its Demise: E. H. Carr, 1931-1939.” Kuniyuki’s committee consisted of Ido Oren (Chair), Sammy Barkin (Co-Chair), Dan O’Neill, Badredine Arfi, and Peter Bergmann (History).


January 7-10, 2009:

Southern Political Science Association Conference Presentations

Dan Cicenia, "Surviving Legislative Deadlock: The 17th Amendment and Institutional Change in the U.S. Senate"

Magda Giurcanu, "Institutional Approaches to Party System Size in East-Central Europe"

Josh Huder, "Legitimate Opposition in Congress: The Struggle for Political Power"

Kim Martin and Hans Schmeisser, "Emerging Trends in Youth Voting Behavior: Social Networking Websites and the 2008 General Election"

Jordan Ragusa, "The Institutionalization of Cooperation: Bicameral Politics and Partisanship"

Iran Rodrigues, "Judicialization of Politics: Constitutional Review and Intrastate Litigiousness in Contemporary Brazil"

Chris Tecklenburg, "The Influence of Courtesy Cycles upon Lower Court Judges' Ideological Preferences"

Sean Walsh, "The Ghetto of Writing: The Encounter with Fear in Ancient and Modern Political Thought"