Political Science Department

Faculty

Photo: Dr. Hirsch

Dr. Alexander Keller Hirsch

Assistant Professor of Political Science

601 B Gruening Building

907.474.5418

ahirsch@alaska.edu

Dr. Alexander Keller Hirsch joined the Department of Political Science at UAF in 2012. He holds a BA in Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a PhD in Politics (with a parenthetical emphasis in History of Consciousness) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on political theories of catastrophe, violence, decolonization, democracy, and justice, with an evolving interest in post-humanism. His scholarship has appeared in several journals, such as Contemporary Political Theory, Theory & Event, Philosophy & Social Criticism, and Law, Culture & the Humanities. Before coming to UAF, Dr. Hirsch was a Visiting Scholar and Residential Research Fellow at the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and taught at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, among other places. At UAF, his courses include Ethics & Society, American Political Thought, Classical Political Theory, Modern Political Theory, Environmental Political Theory and Contemporary Political Thought.

Photo: Dr. Lovecraft hiking in the White Mountains north of Fairbanks on the weekend of the summer solstice. At the higher elevations in these mountains the sun will not dip below the horizon during this time, but there is often snow.

Dr. Amy L. Lovecraft
Associate Professor of Political Science
602 A Gruening Building
907.474.2688
allovecraft@alaska.edu

Dr. Amy Lauren Lovecraft is an Associate Professor of Political Science and has served on the University of Alaska faculty since 2001. She received her B.A. in 1994 and began graduate studies in Vienna, Austria pursuing her undergraduate focus on international economics and European integration. Unable to resist North America for long she returned to earn her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin concentrating on American political development, public policy, and political theory. Her dissertation analyzed transboundary natural resource policies between the United States and Canada. At UAF her courses include the Law and Society suite – Politics and Judicial Process, Con Law I and Con Law II – and, among others, Public Policy, Political Economy, the American Presidency, and Political Behavior. Working to foster interdisciplinary engagement among students and faculty she is active in the Northern Studies and the Resilience and Adaptation programs at UAF. In her research, Dr. Lovecraft explores power dynamics in social-ecological systems. Her scholarship has been published as book chapters and in journals such as Arctic, Marine Policy, The American Review of Canadian Studies, Polar Geography, Policy Studies Journal, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most recently she is co-editor of the transdisciplinary volume North by 2020: Perspectives on Alaska’s Changing Social-Ecological Systems (Autumn 2011) that developed from collaboration during the International Polar Year. She has been a Dickey Fellow in Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Norway at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO). She is currently a member of the U.S. National Academies Polar Research Board and serves as the Associate Director of the North by 2020 Forum.

Photo: Dr. McBeath

Dr. Gerald McBeath
Professor of Political Science
601B Gruening
907.474.6505
gamcbeath@alaska.edu

Dr. Gerald (Jerry) McBeath was educated at the University of Chicago (BA, social sciences, 1963; MA, international relations, 1964) and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., political science, 1970). He joined the UAF faculty in 1976 after teaching at Rutgers College and the City University of New York. His publications include about 55 journal articles and 14 books, the most recent of which are Education Reform in the American States (McBeath, Reyes & Ehrlander, 2008), The Political Economy of Oil in Alaska (McBeath, Berman, Rosenberg & Ehrlander, 2008) and Environmental Change and Food Security in China (McBeath & McBeath, 2010). His research interests are the state and local politics of Alaska, federalism, Native politics, politics of circumpolar northern states, political development of Taiwan and mainland China, comparative politics of East Asian states, and environmental politics and policy, both domestic and international
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Photo: Dr. Meek on one of the trails in the boreal forest of Denali National Park

Dr. Chanda L. Meek
Assistant Professor of Political Science
604A Gruening Building
907.474.5115
clmeek@alaska.edu

Dr. Meek joined the Department of Political Science in 2009 as an interdisciplinary policy scientist. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1996 in marine biology with a minor in environmental policy at Huxley College, Western Washington University and next began graduate studies in Canada at York University in Toronto focusing on political issues in Northern resource management. She received a Master of Environmental Studies (MES) from York in 1999 and worked for several years with non-profit conservation organizations and indigenous communities in Canada and Sweden. From 2001-2003, Dr. Meek worked for the state of California, implementing environmental policy. There she became interested in organizational cultures and their effects on public administration. In 2003, Dr. Meek returned to school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a PhD in Natural Resources and Sustainability. Her dissertation analyzes the effects of organizational culture, history and social networks on policy relating to wildlife management in Alaska. Dr. Meek continues to investigate relationships between social-ecological system dynamics and policy success and is developing a new research project looking at ocean governance. Her courses include Comparative Aboriginal Rights and Policies, and Government and Politics of Russia.

Photo: It's a short but steep trek up Scott's Head for a spectacular view of Scott's Head/Soufriere Bay on the southern tip of Dominica. The bay and littoral are locally managed as a marine protected area and have figured prominently in Dr. Rosenberg's research on stakeholder participation.

Dr. Jonathan Rosenberg
Professor of Political Science
603B Gruening Building
907.474.6502
jrosenberg@alaska.edu

Dr. Jonathan Rosenberg earned a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA in 1992, and has been on faculty at UAF since fall 1993. He teaches Political Economy (PS 100x), Comparative Politics (PS 201), Democracy and Global Society (PS 202), International Political Economy (PS 323), Political Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (PS/HIST 467), and Political Economy of the Global Environment (PS 455/655). He is UAF campus coordinator for the Alaska Universities Legislative Internship Program.

Dr. Rosenberg is the author of several papers and book chapters on Cuban political economy, Mexican parties and interest groups, and participatory environmental management in the Eastern Caribbean. His research evaluates the activities of development assistance agencies, multilateral lending institutions and non-governmental organizations as they affect the participation of local stakeholders in environmentally sustainable development projects. This research has taken him to Washington DC, Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia, and Barbados. He co-authored Comparative Environmental Politics with Dr. McBeath, and the Political Economy of Oil in Alaska: Multinationals vs. the State, with McBeath and two co-authors. He has also collaborated with Dr. Meek and others to analyze institutions for stakeholder participation in oil and gas leasing in the Alaska Arctic outer continental shelf.
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Photo: Was taken in summer 2002 above the Arctic Circle in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Dr. Gladden sits by a set of caribou antlers, near Anaktuvuk Pass in the central Brooks Range.

Dr. James N. Gladden (retired 2010)
Professor Emeritus

Dr. Gladden has a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Indiana University and an M.A. from the University of Houston. He came to the UAF faculty in 1985 and teaches courses on environmental policy and politics, ethics and social issues, and the history of Western and American political ideas. His research interests are environmental policy and the politics of managing public lands in Alaska and other regions of the circumpolar north. He recently completed a study funded by the National Science Foundation on the politics of making land use choices for wilderness areas in northern Finland and Alaska. He has published several books and articles on related topics. Dr. Gladden was a Fulbright Scholar in Nigeria, serving as a senior lecturer at the University of Jos. He taught courses in public policy and federalism, and worked on a rural development project. He was also on sabbatical leave as a visiting scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University. The research focus was on arctic wilderness as a policy concept. He has participated in several summer seminars and institutes sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some topics were the environmental history of the American West and the environmental ethics of managing public lands in Alaska.
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