Fletcher Welcomes Five New Faculty

As of September 1st 2003, Fletcher will welcome not only an incoming class of new students, but also five new faculty: Louis Aucoin, Katrina Burgess, Carolyn Gideon, Adil Najam and George Prevelakis. Fletcher’s newest faculty hold advanced degrees from Boston College Law School, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and the Sorbonne, and their research interests range from Latin America to Greece, and from International Communication to Human Security. Catching up with the internationally active Fletcher faculty this summer was not easy, but Carolyn Gideon and George Prevelakis had this to say on Fletcher, on the books they think you really must read, on summer vacations, and on the Red Sox:

Carolyn Gideon, Assistant Professor of International Communications and Technology Policy [web page] [bio]

I moved to New England for graduate school, and subsequently fell in love with the area. I am really looking forward to getting to know the students and my fellow colleagues at the Fletcher School.

Summer vacation activities:

I just finished my Ph.D. so I began the summer with graduation, and then recovery!! Since then I have been finishing up a paper on the relationship between certainty of bandwidth and price for data services, and beginning to gather data for a paper on broadband pricing in the US and UK. I also spent some time in Seattle, presenting a paper at the Academy of Management Conference and taking a family vacation.

Thought provoking books:

Anne Wells Branscomb’s Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access is a current favorite. It was published in 1994, before e-commerce “took off,” yet it anticipates one of the biggest current issues in international communications. And, National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis, edited by Richard Nelson is starting to get a little dated (1993) but it contains fairly comprehensive analyses of the infrastructure for technology policy in many nations.

Even though I am originally from NY, I enjoy watching Red Sox games – especially at Fenway.

George Prevelakis, the Constantine Karamanlis Professor in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies [web page] [bio]

More than anything else I am looking forward to intellectual exchange with Fletcher students. I was born in Athens, Greece and I have spent about twenty years of my life in Paris. However, when I first visited Boston in 1988, I had the feeling that I might spend a significant part of my life in this city, and I am very happy that I will be at Fletcher while I am living here.

Summer vacation activities:

In my spare time I really like photography and traveling, however, for a Geographer, this is considered "work". I actually spent most of the summer moving my things, and especially my books, from Paris to Athens and Boston.

Thought provoking books:

If you are interested in Geopolitics read Jean Gottmann's, The Significance of Territory. For those with an interest in Hellenic or Turkish studies I recommend Arnold Toynbee's, The Western Question.

Err…No comment?

And the full list of new faculty is:

Louis Aucoin is the new Institute for Human Security Associate Research Professor whose research interests include Rule of Law; Peacekeeping; Rwanda. Most recently he taught at Boston University School of Law. His most recent publications include, The French Constitution. (An annotated guide of the French Constitution of 1958) (2003), and “Judicial Independence in France,” A Guide to Judicial Independence, Technical Publications Series USAID (November 2001).

Katrina Burgess is the new Assistant Professor of International Political Economy and comes to Fletcher from School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, and the Thomas Watson, Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University. Her research interests include Latin American International and Comparative Political Economy; and Political Economy of Development Politics. Her most recent publications include Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy (forthcoming, 2003); and, Between Cooperation and Suspicion: Civil Society and the State in Peru (Editor) (forthcoming).

Carolyn Gideon is the new Assistant Professor of International Communications and Technology Policy. She was most recently a Fellow at the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project, and her research interests include Information and Telecommunications Policy especially issues of industry structure and regulation) and Public Policy Analysis. Her most recent publications include “Technology Policy by Default: Shaping Communications Technology Through Regulatory Policy,” Shaping Science and Technology Policy: The Next Generation of Research (Guston and Sarewitz, Eds), (forthcoming); and, “Sustainable Competition? A Game Theoretic Analysis of Industry Structure in Communications Networks,” Democracy in a Knowledge Economy, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (2003).

Adil Najam is the new Associate Professor of International Politics and Negotiation and comes to Fletcher from the Department of International Relations, Boston University. He has also taught at MIT and UMass-Boston. His research interests include International Multilateral Negotiation; Sustainable Development; Human Development and Human Security; and, International Environmental Politics. His most recent work includes Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia (editor) (2003), and “The Case Against a New International Environmental Organization,” Global Governance (2003).

George Prevelakis is the Constantine Karamanlis Professor in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies and is visiting Fletcher from his position as Professor of Human and Regional Geography, Sorbonne University, Paris. His research interests include Greece, Turkey and the Balkans; Geopolitics; Cultural and Historical Geography; Diasporas; Urban Planning; and, Circulation and Identity. His most recent work includes “La fin de l’interregnum?” Historiens et Geographes (2003), and Athènes: urbanisme, culture et politique (2000).