Category: Professional Notes

Ranjit Singh, associate professor of political science and international affairs, will deliver the keynote address opening a two-day workshop titled “Conflict, Collapsed States, and Social Movements in the Contemporary Middle East and Asia,” which will be held in Kyoto on October 8.

The workshop is jointly organized by Kyoto University’s Center for Islamic Area Studies, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and an organization called Humanosphere. Singh’s address, “Reflections on the Arab Spring,” focuses on the recent popular uprising in Bahrain, and recalls a period, twenty years ago, when he worked as a ghostwriter for a member of that country’s ruling family. His address provides a glimpse into the life of a now-prominent Bahraini minister and the inner workings of the monarchy. It will appear in the workshop’s published proceedings.

Singh will deliver the same talk a few days later to another audience at Tokyo University. At the Kyoto workshop, he will also formally comment on the research papers on Middle East topics delivered by Japanese MA and Ph.D. students. Kyoto and Tokyo Universities are sponsoring the week-long trip.

In celebration of Inauguration Week, President Richard V. Hurley wrote an op-ed that recently appeared in The Free Lance-Star. In the article, Hurley discusses the integral part that service plays to the campus community as well as the events leading up to his inauguration ceremony.

Read the full article.

Steve Stageberg, associate professor of economics, was the featured guest during two interviews on Voice of Russia Radio. In the first interview, he discusses the UBS rogue trading scandal and in the second interview, he discusses the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to sell short-term government bonds.

Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Great Lives public lecture series,wrote an op-ed that appeared in a recent edition of The Free Lance-Star. In the op-ed, Shields discusses why the genre of biography is important.

Read the full article.

In late October, the Biography Channel will interview Shields about the subjects of two of his biographies, Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut, for a series of three-minute episodes about the lives of famous American novelists.

Shields’ publisher, Henry Holt & Co., recently nominated his upcoming biography, “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life,” for a Pulitzer Prize.

Michael Killian, senior instructor in biological sciences, and Jay McGhee, former visiting assistant professor in biological sciences at UMW, had their paper “Salamander Diversity at C.F. Phelps Wildlife Management Area, Fauquier and Culpeper Counties, Virginia” published in the peer-reviewed journal Northeast Naturalist.