Graduate students

Asma Alneel

Asma AlneelAsma Alneel is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her concentrations are international relations and comparative politics. Her research interest is Women's Rights and Empowerment in the Middle East.

Ahmed Alotaibi

Ahmed Alotaibi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His fields of concentration are comparative politics and international relations. His research interests are rentier states, Arabian Gulf politics and nationalism. Additionally, Ahmed has a teaching career in political science as a lecturer at a Saudi university, where he taught several courses, such as Introduction to Political Science, International Relations and Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis.

Lauro Borges

Lauro Borges is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His concentrations are international relations and comparative politics. Lauro's research interests are international security, U.S.-China great-power rivalry, offense-defense theory and airpower. He has published in International Politics as well as in the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies. He can be reached at laraujo@unr.edu.

Caleb Cage

Caleb Cage is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His fields of concentration are public administration and public policy. Cage is interested in studying how the concept of crisis resilience can be used as a lens for rethinking aspects of public administration. He is particularly interested in learning about the importance of leadership applications of crisis resilience in public administration and policy.

Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His concentrations are in international relations, comparative politics and mixed methodology. His research focuses on how the positioning and structure of organizations/institutions, natural hazards and political-economic factors influence state, human and climate security outcomes. His primary methods of focus are Frequentist and Bayesian statistics, Natural/Quasi-Experiments, Agent-Based Modeling, Document Analysis and Archival Research and Process Tracing. His work has been published in Foreign Policy Analysis and The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. He can be contacted at tcampbell2@unr.edu.

Melanie Flores

Melanie FloresMelanie Flores is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her concentrations are public policy and public administration. Flores’ research interests are health policy and the decisions, plans and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society. She currently teaches AIDS: Psychosocial and Healthcare Concerns and Field Studies in Public Health. She currently works as a student services coordinator for the School of Public Health.

A. Cagri Gokcek

Headshot of Cagri GokcekA. Cagri Gokcek is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His concentrations are comparative politics and international relations. He is interested in social movements and contentious politics, with a special focus on politics of labor. Additionally, he works on the accessibility of statistics and statistical software for the blind. He can be reached at agokcek@unr.edu.

Shannon Hartmann

Shannon HartmannShannon Hartmann is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science. She is currently on the job market. Her research interests are terrorism, political violence, counterterrorism, geospatial intelligence applications, and GIS methods. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on understanding the causes of political violence using geospatial analysis and qualitative case studies. She is also interested in identifying ways to improve the quality and accuracy of political violence datasets. For her dissertation, she has produced two new datasets for Northern Ireland and the Philippines that include point-specific georeferencing.

Hartmann is currently ABD and is planning to defend her dissertation in the spring of 2025. In 2022–2023, she was a Bilinski Fellow. In 2021, she received a Global Studies Graduate Student Research Grant from the Ozmen Institute for Global Studies, and she served as a Distinguished Teaching Assistant/Instructor in Core Humanities for the 2021–2022 academic year. At the University, she has been the instructor of record for Introduction to Comparative Politics, Terrorism, Nevada Constitution, and American Experiences and Constitutional Change. Hartmann is hoping to pursue positions that allow her to continue to expand her research and help educate students. She can be reached at SHartmann@unr.edu. 

Miskat Jahan

Headshot of Miskat JahanMiskat Jahan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her concentrations are International Relations and Comparative Politics. Miskat is interested in migration, refugee crises, human rights, governance, and international politics. To date, she has authored multiple articles and book chapters on democracy, development, and public administration. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the University's Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, Outstanding International Graduate Student Scholarship, and Graduate Dean’s Fellowship. Miskat holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University and a BA and MA from the University of Dhaka in Public Administration.

Mariia Makarenko

Mariia Makarenko headshotMariia Makarenko is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her concentrations are international relations and comparative politics and her research interests include foreign policy, migration and voting behavior. Mariia is avidly interested in how differing political regimes affect migrants’ perception of home politics and how this alters their voting patterns.

Mariia is a recipient of the University of Nevada, Reno Graduate Dean’s Fellowship. To date, she has held internships in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Parliament of Ukraine). Holding MA of International Relations from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and MA of International Relations from Tallinn University, she has authored and coauthored multiple articles published in international journals including current work being evaluated in peer review for International Migration Journal. Mariia has presented her research twice a year on foreign policy since 2020 at Szkoła Otwartego Umysłu, a conference for open discourse and debate with regard to active research endeavors. She employs qualitative and quantitative methodologies in her research. She can be reached at mmakarenko@unr.edu.

Horohito Norhatan

Horohito NorhatanHorohito Norhatan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. His research interests lie in the areas of collaborative governance, comparative public administration, comparative public policy, community economic development, worker self-management and sustainable development. Norhatan previously had the opportunity to investigate the impact of the cooperative business model on poverty eradication and job creation in the Basque region of Spain.

Some of his previous teaching responsibilities include, Introduction to Comparative Politics (PSC 211) and Contemporary Basque Politics (BASQ 407). He holds a Ph.D. in Basque Studies from the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Sanjeevan Pradhan

Sanjeevan PradhanSanjeevan Pradhan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He specializes in international relations and comparative politics. Pradhan's research focuses on the strategies that states employ to legitimize costly international initiatives to their domestic audiences. He is conducting case studies on India and China to analyze this process. Additionally, he has a keen interest in exploring relations between great powers and rising powers, the concepts of status and recognition in international relations, the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy, as well as conducting comparative studies between India and China.

Evan Pritsos

Evan Pritsos is a Ph.D. student focusing on American Politics. A native of Nevada, his research interest is electoral politics, particularly electoral reform and alternate voting systems. After graduation, he hopes to focus on teaching.

Richard Ramm

Richard Ramm is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, with concentrations in International Relations and Public Policy. Leveraging an extensive background in local government, his research seeks to understand the institutional aspects of government anti-human trafficking efforts. He employs both quantitative and qualitative empirical research methodologies.

Amber Reid

Amber Reid is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her major is public policy and her minor is public administration. She is interested in studying the interconnection of policy and the implementation of mental and behavioral health programming in an educational setting. A key focus of her research is the use of data to evaluate the effectiveness of program implementation on student and school/district level outcomes, especially in regard to academic achievement, with an emphasis on prevention and early intervention through cost-benefit analyses.

Reid has a bachelor’s degree in secondary math and science and a master’s in social work. Currently she works for the Nevada Department of Education.

Samuel Smith

Samuel SmithSamuel Smith is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno. Samuel holds a master's degree from the College of Business and Accounting Information Systems and a bachelor’s degree in Economics. His research focuses on interdisciplinary cybersecurity issues regarding security, government policy, auditing, blockchain and artificial intelligence. He collaborates with researchers as part of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has held positions of director and consultant, serving various entities including Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, public utilities and industries subject to government regulation. His publications include the topics of cybersecurity, data governance, blockchain, financial and IT auditing, sustainable energy and policy in the Journal of Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) and the LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources. Among his interests are organizing startup initiatives, educational workshops and workforce development events centered around subjects within emerging technology, policy and inclusive product management.