Colloquia

One of the Department of Political Science's greatest strengths is its thriving intellectual community. We host several different colloquia focusing on a variety of topics: international relations, comparative politics, political theory, political methodology, public policy, political psychology, and power, equity, and diversity. In these workshops, graduate students and faculty from around the University can share and gain valuable feedback on works in progress. Furthermore, nationally and internationally renowned visiting scholars often present their work at these same workshops.

The Comparative Politics Colloquium is a forum for conversations about innovative approaches to the study of comparative politics. Each semester, we select several top scholars from a range of disciplines to invite to speak. We also provide a valuable forum for graduate students from within the department to present their work.

General Inquiries: compol@umn.edu

Spring 2024 Organizers: None for 2023/2024

Faculty Advisor: David Samuels

Every year, graduate students in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota put together a schedule of academic sessions relevant to political theory, in the form of paper presentations, roundtable discussions, and reading groups. Presenters are graduate students, department faculty, faculty from other cognate departments at the university, other local college faculty (Carleton, Macalester, St. Olaf, etc.), and the occasional out-of-town guest. Past guests have included Charles Mills (CUNY Graduate Center), Linda Zerilli (UChicago), Ernesto Laclau (Northwestern), Amitai Etzioni (George Washington), Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley), Bonnie Honig (Brown), and Nicholas Xenos (UMass Amherst).

General Inquiries: MNPTC@umn.edu

Spring 2024 Organizer: Katelyn Shepardson

Faculty Advisor: Arash Davari

Minnesota International Relations Colloquium (MIRC) is a series of informal seminars and presentations organized by University of Minnesota graduate students of International Relations. Since 1997, MIRC has served as an on-going forum for Minnesota students and faculty, and guests from other colleges and universities, to participate in academically informed and politically engaged conversations about theoretical and practical issues pertaining to international and global politics.

Spring 2024 Organizer: Ricardo Jasso

Faculty Advisor: Mark Bell

The goal of the Political Methodology Colloquium is to provide a venue for the discussion of methodologically informed political science research. Each semester we invite a number of top scholars and graduate students from the University of Minnesota and the outside scholarly community to present on research topics related to either (1) political and social science methodology or (2) the application of these methods to questions of interest to political science at large.

General Inquiries: MPMC@umn.edu

Spring 2024 Organizers: Dongwook Kim and Emily Kurtz

Faculty Advisor: John Freeman

The American Politics Colloquium provides a venue for presentations of new and innovative work relating to political institutions, public policies, and mass political behavior in American politics. The colloquium hosts several top scholars in the field throughout the year to present their latest work. In addition, the colloquium serves as a forum for Minnesota graduate students to present their on-going work and engage in substantive and methodological conversations pertaining to their work and current issues in American politics.

Spring 2024 Organizer: Emily Kurtz

Faculty Advisor: Kathryn Pearson

The Power, Equity, and Diversity (PED) Colloquium is held in the spring semester of every other academic year. It is a curated forum for moderated conversations about power, equity, and diversity. Our objective is to workshop ideas on these topics as they relate to the study of politics, and thus to foster meaningful and cutting-edge research in political science and beyond. 

Each session promises to feature select University of Minnesota faculty from across subfields in the Department of Political Science in conversation with faculty from other social science and humanities disciplines on our campus and/or guests from other institutions. Sessions will be organized around a specific problem and a set of guiding questions. Possible topics for the upcoming spring 2024 colloquium include: approaches to comparison across the social science and humanities; policing and higher education; war, women, and memory; and the environment and the state.

Faculty Organizer: Arash Davari

Spring 2024 Schedule

1/19 PED & PTC: Dipali Mukhopadhyay and Joe Soss, University of Minnesota. "Generalizability: Between the Local and the Global, Public Policy and Political Science."
1/22 MIRC: Jane Sumner and Ezgi Özçelik, University of Minnesota. “National Security and Public Opinion on FDI.”
2/2 PTC & PED: Christian Uwe. "On Poetry as Political Thought: The Case of the Precolonial Rwandan State."
2/5 CPC: Martha Wilfahrt, UC Berkeley.
2/12 MIRC: Discussion of Crossing the Critical/Mainstream Divide in IR. Led by Tanisha Fazal and Helen Kinsella. 
2/16 PED: Yalile Suriel, University of Minnesota; Treasure Tinsley, University of Minnesota; Liz Calhoun, University of Minnesota; Adam Lê, University of Minnesota; Maya Van Nuys, University of Chicago. "The University, the Police, and the Politics of the Everyday."
2/23 APC & MPMC: Dan Myers and Taylor Hvidsten. "Using a Panel Experiment to Test the Effects of Local and National Media Coverage of Congress."
2/23 PED: Helen Kinsella, University of Minnesota; Nasema Zeerak, University of Minnesota; Rachmi Diyah Larasati, University of Minnesota. "War, Women, and Memory."
2/26 CPC & MIRC: Tricia Olson, University of Minnesota.
3/11 CPC: Catherine Guisan, University of Minnesota. “Making and Unmaking Peace in Europe and Beyond: Rethinking the US’ Politics of Power.
3/15 PED: Rebecca Givan, Rutgers University; Joan Tronto, University of Minnesota; Teri Caraway, University of Minnesota. "Academic Life, the Study of Labor, and Care." 
3/15 MPMC: Methods prelim session.
3/22 PED: Nazita Lajevardi, Michigan State University. "Islamophobia, the Arab & Muslim American Vote, and the 2024 Presidential Election."
3/29 APC & MPMC: MPSA practice presentation session. Ezgi Özçelik, “Public Definitions of National Security and Public Opinion on Inward FDI.” Sarah Beck, "COVID-19 Emergency Relief Policies: Policy Feedback Effects of Eviction Moratoriums." Nicolas Campos, "Working-class Democrats vs. Working-class Republicans: Partisan Differences in Perceptions of Working-class Candidates in Congressional Primaries."
4/8 MIRC: Baruchi Malewich, University of Minnesota. “Between Complicity and Resistance: Wartime Collaboration as a Field of Study."
4/12 PTC & PED: Serra Hakyemez, University of Minnesota. "Deadly Refusals: Decolonization at Times of Counterterrorism."
4/12 APC: AP prelim session.
4/15 MIRC: Ches Thurber, Northern Illinois University.
4/19 MPMC: Jae Yeon Kim, Code for America. "Training Computational Social Science PhD Students for Academic and Non-Academic Careers."
4/22 MIRC: Carl Graefe, University of Minnesota (Practice Job Talk). “New Spaces: On Territoriality in an Expansive Era.”
4/26 PED: Tanisha Fazal, University of Minnesota; Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota; Zozan Pehlivan, University of Minnesota. "Climate Change and the Study of Power."
4/26 MPMC: Jonathan Renshon, UW Madison.