News & Events 9/14

Meet Our New Faculty!

 ELIZABETH MCGUIRE 

      Dr. Elizabeth McGuire recently finished her PhD at Yale University, with her dissertation exploring how social groups affect the diffusion of gender norms and hot women process female role models in politics. Her research focusing on gender politics, development politics, and African politics. She qualified in comparative politics, political economy and international relations. While at Yale, Dr. McGuire consistently wore her “Blue Y” BYU gear on campus and almost no one ever noticed the difference. 
     Dr. McGuire grew up primarily in the mountain west but is very bad at skiing. She is graduate of Brigham Young University with a BA in International Relations (’13). She has conducted field research with Oxford University, the Center for Global Development, and IPA.
    Studying with Drs. Nielson and Findley at BYU exposed McGuire to the career opportunities available for researchers. She participated in the mentored research abroad program in Uganda while an undergraduate, and learned the value of experimental research, as well as critical skills in project design and field research. She has consistently returned to the African continent to conduct field experiments since that time and enjoys the creativity and challenge of working with experiments in that context.
     Dr. McGuire joined the BYU Political Science faculty in the summer of 2021.

DAVID ROMNEY

      David Romney joins the department from Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in November 2020 and afterward completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Weatherhead Center. He is, however, not completely new to BYU, having received his B.A. in Middle East Studies and Arabic, with a minor in Modern Hebrew, from Brigham Young University in 2013. David has two main areas of research. First, he studies intragroup attitudes and norms in situations of conflict, with a particular focus on Israel and Palestine. In this research agenda, he addresses questions such as: How do members of ethnic groups form attitudes and develop ingroup norms toward others, and how can we change those attitudes and norms to improve intergroup relations? In a second research agenda, he also studies the role of social media, misinformation, and conspiracy theories in the Arab Middle East. In both research agendas, he bases his analyses primarily on lab and survey experiments, natural experiments, and computational textual analysis. David is excited to be teaching courses on the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict and on ethnic conflict his first semester here.

GENTRY JENKINS

     Gentry Jenkins is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. This year, he is teaching Principles of International Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy. Gentry was previously a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. His research centers on the connections between revolution, state-building, civil war, and international conflict. Gentry’s dissertation examines how revolutionary government policies motivate new ethnic rebellions in the peripheries of the state. While at the University of Chicago, Gentry also worked as a graduate research associate at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, where he studied the targeting strategies employed by militant groups. He also served for two years as the student coordinator for the Program on International Security Policy (which has now become the Workshop on International Politics). 
     In addition to teaching and research, Gentry enjoys spending time with his wife, Liz, and their two daughters. Gentry holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, an MA in International Relations from their Committee on International Relations, and a BA in History from the University of Idaho.  

• Cornerstone Research Virtual Information Session and Case Workshop: Monday, September 20^th, 6:00–7:30pm
• Analyst:  Tuesday, September 21st at 11:59 pm
• Summer Analyst:  Sunday, October 3rd at 11:59 pm