The Duck of Minerva

Amanda Murdie

Amanda Murdie is Professor & Dean Rusk Scholar of International Relations in the Department of International Affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs (Stanford, 2014). Her main research interests include non-state actors, and human rights and human security. When not blogging, Amanda enjoys hanging out with her two pre-teen daughters (as long as she can keep them away from their cell phones) and her fabulous significant other.

Recent Posts

Five Myths About Publishing International Relations Articles at the American Journal of Political Science

Five Myths About Publishing International Relations Articles at the American Journal of Political Science

by Amanda Murdie | 19 June, 2020 |

The following is a guest post by Dr. Dan Reiter. Dr. Reiter is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Political Science at Emory University.  He is the author, coauthor, or editor of Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Cornell, 1996), Democracies at War (Princeton, 2002, with Allan C. Stam), How Wars End (Princeton, 2009), and The Sword’s Other Edge: Tradeoffs in the Pursuit of Military Effectiveness (Cambridge 2017), as well as dozens of scholarly articles. I am the new associate editor for international relations (IR) at the American Journal of Political Science, and I...

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WHO’s to Blame? Coronavirus and the Politics of Blame Shifting

WHO’s to Blame? Coronavirus and the Politics of Blame Shifting

by Amanda Murdie | 26 May, 2020 | , ,

The following is a guest post by Isabella Alcañiz and Timothy Hellwig. Isabella Alcañiz is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include climate inequality, disaster policy, the state in the global south, and Latin American politics. She is author of Environmental and Nuclear Networks in the Global South: How Skills Shape International Cooperation (2016, Cambridge). Timothy Hellwig is Professor of Political Science and Academic Director of the Europe Gateway at Indiana University.  He is a team member of the Executive Approval...

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Journal Submissions in Times of COVID-19: Is There A Gender Gap?

Journal Submissions in Times of COVID-19: Is There A Gender Gap?

by Amanda Murdie | 15 May, 2020 | , , ,

The following is a post by ISA journal editors Krista Wiegand (International Studies Quarterly), Debbie Lisle (International Political Sociology), Amanda Murdie (International Studies Review), and James Scott (International Studies Perspectives). There has been a lot of talk in academia about the many negative consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has generated, ranging from declining enrollments, inability to travel for field research or conferences, and research productivity working from home. As editors of the International Studies Association (ISA) journals, we started noticing some new...

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Apart, Together: The separate worlds of Covid-19 beliefs

Apart, Together: The separate worlds of Covid-19 beliefs

by Amanda Murdie | 8 May, 2020 | ,

The following is a guest post by Dr. Leah Windsor. Dr. Windsor is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute for Intelligent Systems at The University of Memphis where she directs the Languages Across Cultures and Languages Across Modalities labs. From 2014-2019 served as PI for a Department of Defense Minerva Initiative grant, using computational linguistics to analyze political communication in international relations. Why are we seeing an uptick in discussions about non-mainstream theories about the origin and spread of Covid-19? In my recent social media feeds, I have noticed more...

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Shaming without naming: Why is the international community not calling out human rights violators?

by Amanda Murdie | 9 October, 2019 |

This is a guest post by Theresa Squatrito, Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics, Magnus Lundgren, Postdoctoral Researcher at Stockholm University, and Thomas Sommerer, Associate Professor at Stockholm University. On May 6, 2019, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, accused world leaders for failing in their defense of human rights.  World leaders, he claimed, are “weak, short-sighted and mediocre” and remain silent in response to some of today’s worst human rights violators. Given the prominence of human rights in...

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Scary Dragon or Cuddly Panda? Why Role Change Matters for Hegemony in Asia

by Amanda Murdie | 20 September, 2019 |

The following is a guest post by Dr. Daniel Nicholls. Daniel Nicholls is an adjunct professor of IR at ESADE and the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His research looks at the interplay between relational structures, roles and hierarchy.   In an interesting piece on the Japan-South Korea spat in Foreign Affairs, Bonnie S. Glaser and Oriana Skylar Mastro argue that by failing to mediate the dispute between the keystones of its Asian alliance system, the US risks losing regional influence to a fast-moving and wily China. In short, if Washington doesn’t jump in as a relationship counselor,...

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Early lessons from a survey on bias in family formation in academia

by Amanda Murdie | 9 September, 2019 |

The following is a guest post by Leah C. Windsor and Kerry F. Crawford. Windsor is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute for Intelligent Systems at The University of Memphis. Crawford is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at James Madison University. To take their survey, visit: https://tinyurl.com/drparentsurvey This is the first in the series on changing the field of international relations. #IRChange Academic families – especially dual-career spouses – with young children are struggling in more specific and remediable ways than we thought when we first...

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Pompeo’s New Commission on Unalienable Rights Falls Short, But Represents a Real Opportunity

Pompeo’s New Commission on Unalienable Rights Falls Short, But Represents a Real Opportunity

by Amanda Murdie | 4 September, 2019 | ,

The following is a guest post by Dr. Ryan M. Welch. Dr. Welch is Assistant Professor at the University of Tampa who specializes in human rights institutions and is a former member of the Maricopa County Human Rights Committee. Recently, the State Department created a human rights commission called the Commission on Unalienable Rights (hereinafter: the Commission).  Like an oil industry lobbyist heading the Department of Interior, a climate skeptic atop the EPA, and a charter school advocate running the public education department, most believe this another cynical instance of an institution...

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The ULTIMATE Academic Job Market Guide

by Amanda Murdie | 8 July, 2019 |

The following is a guest post by K. Anne Watson, a PhD candidate in Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs. The academic job market is incredibly stressful. This is at least partly because so much of the process tends to be opaque. (The rest, of course, is because you will be asked to handle all of it while juggling your day-to-day life and feeling a vague—or not-so-vague—sense of existential dread settling in around you.) Leading up to my first applications, I asked question after question of my committee...

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What Shapes Public Attitudes Toward Hosting Syrian Refugees – And How They Can Change

by Amanda Murdie | 18 February, 2019 |

Guest post by Tiffany S. Chu, Alex Braithwaite, Faten Ghosn, and Justin Curtis Plans to fund a border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border are troubling D.C. politics. During his campaign for the presidency, candidate Trump promised a wall would be built to reduce security issues he associated with existing border policy. In the longest government shutdown in history, Democrats in Congress refused President Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in funding for such a wall. While the government eventually reopened, ongoing negotiations in Congress to reach a border security deal ahead of another shutdown...

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