By Nicole Dudenhoefer Christopher Faulkner, a Ph.D. candidate in UCF’s security studies program, was recently awarded a Minerva Research Initiative and United States Institute of Peace Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship for his dissertation on child soldiering. More than 200 students applied for the award this year, but only 18 were awarded, with some of last year’s winners […]
Security Studies Ph.D. candidate Christopher Faulkner recently published an article in the journal Civil Wars. Faulkner’s article titled “Buying Peace? Civil War Peace Duration and Private Military & Security Companies,” explores the dynamics and implications of private military and security company (PMSC) involvement in civil conflicts. Suggesting that scholarship has paid scant attention to the […]
Security Studies Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Schiel won the grand prize in the Jim Winkates Graduate Student Paper Competition, awarded by the International Studies Association’s Southern region. Schiel’s paper, titled “The Conditionality of Vulnerability,” seeks to explain why recent years have seen an increasing number of military coup attempts target democratic regimes rather than non-democratic regimes. […]
Security Studies Ph.D. candidates Rebecca Schiel and Christopher Faulkner, along with assistant professor Jonathan Powell, recently published an analysis in the journal Africa Spectrum. Their analysis, titled “Mutiny in Côte d’Ivoire,” explores the causes and consequences of the mutinies that have taken place in Côte d’Ivoire since 1990. With a particular focus on the three […]
Christopher Faulkner and Joshua Lambert, both a part of the Security Studies Ph.D. program, won the 2017 Florida Political Science Association’s (FPSA) Best Graduate Paper Award for their paper titled, “Sign on the Dotted Line: Contracting Private Military and Security Companies in African Civil Wars.” Christopher and Joshua presented their paper at the 2017 FPSA Annual Meeting […]
Christopher Faulkner, Security Studies Ph.D. candidate, recently published an article, “Money and Control: Rebel Groups and the Forcible Recruitment of Child Soldiers.” The article appeared in the journal African Security and explores the factors impacting rebel groups’ decision making when it comes to employing child soldiers. Faulkner hypothesizes that resource endowments at a rebel group’s onset […]
The UCF Political Science Department is proud to announce that Jennifer L. Hudson, a graduate student in the Political Science master’s program, won the FPSA 2016 Best Graduate Paper Award for her paper titled, “Legislative Gridlock, Partisanship, and Trust in Government.” The Florida Political Science Association (FPSA) is a professional association of scholars and students […]
The weekend of October 23-25th, 11 students and 4 faculty and staff members represented UCF at the International Studies Association (ISA) South annual conference in Tampa, Florida. Christopher Faulkner and Rebecca Schiel, two second-year Ph.D. security studies students, not only represented UCF at the conference, but they also took home the Jim Winkates Graduate Student Paper grand prize and runner-up […]