UCD School of Politics and International Relations Scoil na Polaitíochta agus Gnóthaí Idirnáisiúnta UCD

Ms Doris Nnenna Aja (Global Human Development)

Research Interests: Development studies; foreign aid; conflict; post-conflict stability; terrorism; counter-terrorism, international organizations
Thesis Title: The Interplay between Foreign Aid Peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Stability

Email: doris.aja@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Samuel Brazys

Mr Dave Banks (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Sport for Peace and Development; Social Identity; Political Psychology
Thesis Title: The Effectiveness of Sports Reconciliation Projects on Post-Conflict Society

Email: dave.banks@ucdconnect.ie 
Supervisor: Dr Tobias Theiler

Ms Leticia Barbabela (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Corruption; anti-corruption policies; accountability; local governance; clientelism; political behaviour
Thesis Title: Anti-corruption efforts, institutional trust and citizen attitudes towards fighting corruption

Email: leticia.barbabela@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Eva Wegner

Mr Isaac Bennett (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Military innovation; conflict studies; emergent technology; just war theory; airpower
Thesis title: Battlefields of the Future: How Military Innovation Will Change the Calculus of War in Asymmetrical Conflicts

Email: isaac.bennett@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Professor Ben Tonra

Ms Julia Canas Martinez (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Women's participation in political violence; foreign fighters; conflict studies 
Thesis Title: Women in political violence: The Western Muhajirat of the Islamic State

Email: julia.canasmartinez@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Stephanie Dornschneider

Mr Tony Casey (Public Policy)

Research Interests: Political theory; governance; regulation; policy networks; agent based modelling; social network analysis
Thesis Title: A Theory of Governance: The Micro-Foundations of Political Order

Email: tony.casey@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Johan A Elkink

Mr Michael Coleman (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: The possibility of a Marxist account of Rights and its application to contemporary Far Left movements

Email: michael.oleman@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Joseph Lacey

Mr Pierce Daly (Quantitative Social Sciences)

Thesis title: To quantitatively assess how wealth, and its distribution, has evolved historically in Ireland

Email: pierce.daly@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Aidan Regan

Ms Emanuela Ferrari (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Post structural political ecology; environmental conflicts/ environmental justice; social protest and resistance; decolonial theory
Thesis title: Defending the local: Environmental defenders and the challenge of advancing alternative concepts of nature, development and sustainability

Email: emanuela.ferrari@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Prof Ben Tonra

Ms Dana Guy (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: political conflict; social media; Israel; Palestine
Thesis title: The medium and the message: Social media, virtual communities and narratives in intractable conflicts

Email: dana.guy@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Vincent Durac

Mr Galen Lamphere-Englund (Complex Systems and Computational Social Sciences)

Research Interests: Conflict studies; preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE); terrorism; predictive analytics; critical humanitarian studies; development studies
Thesis title: Predicting violent conflict through natural language processing of sentiment in media

Email: galen.lamphere-englund@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Stephanie Dornschneider

Mr Junhyoung Lee

Research interests: Comparative authoritarianism; legitimation mechanism of authoritarian regimes; Post-communist countries in Asia; Korea politics; qualitative research methods 
Thesis Title: Looking Backward to Move Forward: Legitimation and Authoritarian Origins in East Asia

Email: junhyoung.lee@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Alex Dukalskis

Ms Xiaodong Li (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Internal migration; public policy, China's Hukou system reforms; subjective well-being; urbanisation in developing countries
Thesis Title: A comparative study of China and EU on the migration in urbanization process

Email: xiaodong.li@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Graham Finlay

Mr Jesper Lindqvist (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: The Left-Right Dimension of Politics; Political Dimensions; Ideologies; Political Values; Political Competition
Thesis title: Why speak of Left and Right? In search of an underlying value dimension.

Email: jesper.lindqvist@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Jos Elkink
Co-Supervisor: Professor David Farrell

Ms Marianna Lovato (Politics and International Relations)

Research interests: European Union foreign policy; Europeanisation of foriegn policy; Italian foreign policy; French foreign policy; European Union policy making 
Thesis Title: The rules of the game: How to bargain and win at the EU negotiating table - Understanding negotiation effectiveness in EU foreign policy

Email: marianna.lovato@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Professor Ben Tonra

Mr James MacCarthy Morrogh (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: Foreign policy, fundamentalism and American public opinion: the impact of evangelicals and Christian belief

Email: james.maccarthymorrogh@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr James Cross

Mr Tyler McDonough (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis Title: The sectarian divide and rule tactics of the Syrian and Bahraini regimes during the 2011 Arab uprisings

Email: tyler.mc-donough@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Stephanie Dornschneider

Ms Sinead McGrath (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: Migration; transitional justice; gender mainstreaming; intersectionality; international refugee law; human rights mechanisms
Thesis Title: Gender displacement and transitional justice: the role of UNHCR and IOM in transitional settings

Email: sinead.mcgrath@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Alex Dukalskis

Mr Kevin McParland (Politics & International Relations)

Research Interests: South Asian politics; education and development; globalisation and development
Thesis Title: No country is an island: a comparative analysis of Sri Lanka's alliances with India and China, 2005-2015

Email: kevin.mcparland@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Andy Storey

Ms Emma Murphy (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Gender, transitional justice, reconciliation
Thesis Title: The gendered healing gap

Email: emma.murphy1@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Dawn Walsh

Mr Jihed Ncib (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Political representation; public opinion; public policy; legislative behaviour; quantitative text analysis
Thesis Title: Dynamic representation and issue responsiveness: measuring the impact of institutional and contextual factors on individual legislators’ responsiveness using text analysis

Email: jihed.ncib@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Stefan Müller

Ms Orla Ni Cheallachain (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Critical security studies; political violence; states of emergency; peace studies; discourse analysis; the politics of method; gender in international relations
Thesis title: Codifying the Folk Devil? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Counterterrorism Legislating in the House of Commons 1973 - 2019

Email: orla.ni-cheallachain@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Vincent Durac

Research Profile

Ms Sadhbh O'Neill (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Normative political theory; the political and social theory of Jurgen Habermas; climate justice; democratic theory
Thesis title: Deliberative democracy and climate change: an evaluation of the quality of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary discourse in the public sphere

Email: sadhbh.o-neill@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Alexa Zellentin
Co-Supervisor: Dr Tobias Theiler

Mr Harry O'Rahilly (Quantitative Social Sciences)

Thesis title: The relationship between traffic flows and market structure and price dispersion

Email: harry.orahilly@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Professor Paul Walsh

Ms Jelena Radakovic (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: EU enlargement, identity construction, discourse analysis, Western Balkans 
Thesis title: The Role of Identity Discourse in the EU Accession Process. Case Studies: Montenegro and Serbia

Email: jelena.radakovic@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Prof Ben Tonra
Co-Supervisor: Dr Dawn Walsh

Mr Redmond Scales (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Authoritarian politics; behaviour, Aid and development; security and defence; US politics
Thesis title: Explaining variations in the control of authoritarian regimes: The impact of foreign aid on subnational regime control

Email: redmond.scales@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Alex Dukalskis

Mr Carl Smith (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: China's Belt and Road Initiative in developing countries

Email: carl.smith@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Krishna Vadlamannati

Mr Daniel Stairs (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Comparative political economy; international political economy; process tracing; finance; the aftermath of the global financial crisis
Thesis title: When do democracies with powerful banks succeed in imposing significant new regulations on those banks?

Email: daniel.stairs@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Aidan Regan

Mr Benjamin Swift (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: On Republican Intergovernmentalism, Procedural Legitimacy and Inter-Governmental Decision-Making in the European Union

Email: benjamin.swift@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Joseph Lacey

Mr Jorge Tamames (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: Populism as Countermovement: Left and right insurgencies in Western Europe

Email: jorge.tamames@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Aidan Regan

Mr Paul Turner (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis title: Genes and Justice: Germline Intervention and Intergenerational Justice

Email: paul.turner@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Graham Finlay

Ms Natalia Umansky (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: international security studies, international relations, securitization theory, social media, quantitative text analysis
Thesis title: Repost and like: Securitization theory in a globalized world.

Email: natalia.umansky@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr James Cross

Mr Radek Vana (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: IR theory, political psychology, war, cooperation, instinct
Thesis title: The drive theory of international relations: Why do wars happen?

Email: radek.vana@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Tobias Theiler

Mr Colm Walsh (Politics & International Relations)

Research interests: Democratic reform; political cynicism; populism; electoral behaviour
Thesis title: Political cynicism, populism and support for democratic reform

Email: colm.walsh@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Johan A Elkink

Mr Chenlong Wang (Complex Systems and Computational Social Science)

Research Interests: Wisdom of the crowds; Filter bubble/Echo Chamber; Online public opinion evolution
Thesis Title: The mechanisms of knowledge-sharing and public opinion evolution in online knowledge-sharing platforms

Email: chenlong.wang@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Pablo Lucas

Mr Yao Wang (Politics and International Relations)

Research Interests: EU politics; EU's foreign policy towards China; America's influence on EU's decision-making
Thesis Title: US's factor in EU's foreign policy towards China after the Cold War

Email: yao.wang@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr James Cross

Mr Dino Wildi (Politics & International Relations)

Thesis Title: How does European integration interact with right-wing populism in various countries, and which factors affect this interaction?

Email: dino.wildi@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Thomas Däubler

Ms Feiyang Xu (Politics and International Relations)

Thesis Title: UAre China's new global finance initiatives including a competitive foreign aid response

Email: feiyang.xu@ucdconnect.ie
Supervisor: Dr Krishna Vadlamannati