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Mission Statement

Many of the 21st century’s most pressing challenges involve problems that transcend established territorial borders. From climate change to forced migration to global pandemics, these borderless problems cut across national boundaries and demand transnational solutions. At the same time, the nature of politics itself is also undergoing a transformation, as established societies move from industrialized to knowledge-based and confront an increasingly globalized world. In response, new forms of political organization and visions of citizenship have emerged to address these problems, which challenge the state as the primary focus of political authority and constitute a growing transnational public sphere.
 
We have developed a program that prepares students to participate in and shape the transnational public debate about the most urgent contemporary global problems. Our mission is to equip students with a sophisticated set of theoretical tools and practical experiences that in combination will prepare them to understand and address the reality of the contemporary global landscape. Through a curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking, writing, and experiential learning, the program educates the next generation of global citizens to be actively engaged in the transnational public sphere.

Leadership

  • Michelle Murray
    Faculty Director, Bard MA in Global Studies
    Associate Professor of Politics, Bard College

    Michelle Murray

    BA, MA, PhD, University of Chicago. Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Studies, University of Chicago (2007–10); Deans Fellow in International Security and US Foreign Policy, John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College (2014–15). Recipient, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2006–07), Smith Richardson Foundation Summer Research Grant (2004/2006). Teaching and research interests include international relations theory; security studies; the politics of recognition among states; international history, especially pre–World War I Europe; and global governance and international organization. Her current research focuses on how the desire for status recognition shapes the military strategies of rising great powers, with a particular focus on American, British, and German naval strategy before World War I. This work has appeared in the journals Security Studies and Global Discourse, and as chapters in edited volumes. She presents regularly at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and International Studies Association. At Bard since 2010.
  • Amanda Hutson
    Assistant Director, Graduate Programs

    Amanda Hutson

    Amanda Hutson oversees graduate programs for the MA in Global Studies program, including graduate exchanges with CEU and the wider OSUN network. She received her BA in International Studies and History from Emory University, focusing on Western European politics and history, and spent a semester at University College London studying British history. She then received a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Georgia, specializing in nonprofit administration. Before joining MAGS, Amanda worked for the City of Savannah, and most recently, as the Academic Degree Program Coordinator for the Political Science Department at Emory University in Atlanta.
  • Thomas Fetzer
    Associate Professor of International Relations, Central European University

    Thomas Fetzer

    Thomas Fetzer received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence (Department of History and Civilization) in 2005. Before joining CEU, Thomas held post-doctoral research and teaching positions at the Max-Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne (2006), the London School of Economics (2007-2008) and the University of Warwick (2009). His current research interests are primarily related to the role of ideas in the international political economy, with a specific focus on (economic) nationalism, as well as the impact of economic globalization on socioeconomic inequality and processes of collective interest formation. In a recent project, Thomas has also explored the emergence of various notions of 'economic Europeannness'. Beyond his own research, Thomas is interested in a number of other fields, including the comparative political economy of labor and industrial relations, EU social policy and the European social model, the history and contemporary development of multinational firms, the politics of consumption, as well as the broader area of contemporary European and transnational history, in particular with regard to issues of collective memory and identity. He also has a strong interest in the methodological debates about the relationship between history and the social sciences.
  • Duncan MacDonald ’23
    Program Coordinator (Recruitment and Admissions), MA Global Studies

    Duncan MacDonald ’23

    Duncan joined the MAGS team in July 2023 after graduating from Bard College in May with a joint-BA in Political Studies (International Relations) and French Studies. His Senior Project explored France's model of a feminist foreign policy from an ontological security perspective, leading to an investigation and critique of France's depiction of a feminist national Self. Throughout his time at Bard, he participated in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) Program (Spring ’22) where he interned with MAGS partner Foreign Policy Association, in addition to a semester at the Institute for Field Education (IFE) in Paris (Fall ’21) where he interned at Association Pierre Claver, a renowned association that offers comprehensive French culture and society courses to refugees in the resettlement process. 
     
  • Josie Snider
    Program Coordinator (Student Affairs), MA Global Studies

    Josie Snider

    Josie joined the MAGS team after graduating with an Erasmus Mundus MA in Global Studies from the University of Vienna and Leipzig University. Her master’s thesis focused on censorship of criticism of Israel in Germany, exploring it through the lenses of Holocaust memory culture, news media, and interviews with activists and academics. Prior to studying in Austria and Germany, she spent four years teaching English in Madrid to adults and children of all levels and backgrounds. Josie also holds a BA in Marketing Communications from Emerson College. While in Boston, she interned and worked in marketing and development for multiple organizations with focuses ranging from local arts and culture to education and anti-classism initiatives.

Current Faculty


Our distinguished faculty join us from across the global Open Society University Network and bring a range of academic and professional experiences to the MAGS community. Rotating frequently, our faculty join us from Bard’s Annandale campus, Central European University’s International Relations department, as well as from renowned careers in global affairs in international law, gender affairs, global governance, and more. 
 
  • Nicholas Dunn
    Klemens von Klemperer Hannah Arendt Center Teaching Fellow

    Nicholas Dunn

    Nicholas Dunn, a postdoctoral fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard, will be teaching courses in philosophy and politics at the College as well as for the Bard Prison Initiative. His primary areas of research are Immanuel Kant, ethics, early modern philosophy, and contemporary political theory, with an emphasis on Hannah Arendt and issues related to pluralism, democracy, and disagreement. The central theme of his work is the faculty of judgment: its nature as a mental activity and its practical potential. His current work deals with the role of feeling, imagination, and the Other in cultivating one’s judgment. Publications include articles in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, and Kant Studies Online; and book reviews in Kantian Review 25 and Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide. He taught previously at McGill University, where his courses covered subjects such as Kant on practical judgment, topics in political theory, and environmental ethics.

    BA, The King’s College; MA, Simon Fraser University; PhD, McGill University. At Bard: 2022–23.
  • Christopher McIntosh
    Assistant Professor of Political Studies,
    Bard College

    Christopher McIntosh

    Christopher McIntosh began teaching at Bard in 2010.  He received his Ph.D. in 2013 from The University of Chicago, specializing in international relations and has an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown. His principal research and teaching interests revolve around international relations, security studies, temporality, and post-structural theory.  His primary research focuses on how the concept of war in contemporary international politics is constituted by sovereignty and the implications it has for the practice of political violence. This research builds on his dissertation, “What Makes a War, a War? Sovereignty, War, and the Subject of International Politics”.  At Bard he teaches courses on global ethics, sovereignty and war, terrorism, security, and international relations. Prior to Bard, Professor McIntosh has worked at CSIS and the Office of Naval Intelligence.

    A.B., Political Science, University of Georgia; M.A., Security Studies, Georgetown University; M.A, Ph.D., Political Science, University of Chicago. At Bard since 2010.
  • Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
    Associate Professor of Anthropology,
    Bard College

    Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

    PhD, Columbia University, 2015. Professor Stamatopoulou-Robbins is an anthropologist with research interests in infrastructure, waste, environment, platform capitalism, and the home. Her first book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), has won five major book awards and explores what happens when, as Palestinians are increasingly forced into proximity with their own wastes and with those of their occupiers, waste is transformed from “matter out of place,” per prevailing anthropological wisdom, into matter with no place to go—or its own ecology. Her current book, Controlled Alienation: Airbnb and the Future of Home (under contract with Duke University Press), explores the joint world-making of austerity and home-sharing in Greece. Other publications include pieces in Environment and Planning E, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Arab Studies Journal, The Jerusalem Quarterly, Anthropology News, Thresholds, and The New Centennial Review. Her film Waste Underground (with videographer Ali al-Deek) premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in Ramallah in 2017. She serves on the editorial teams of Cultural Anthropology and MERIP. Her research has been awarded funding by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Wenner Gren Foundation, Columbia University, and the Palestinian American Research Council. At Bard since 2013.
  • Erzsebet Strausz
    Assistant Professor of International Relations, Central European University

    Erzsebet Strausz

    Erzsebet Strausz is an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Central European University in Budapest, where she teaches MA courses on international relations theory, international security and critical approaches. She holds a PhD from Aberystwyth University and her dissertation received the British International Studies Association’s Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize in 2013. Her research focuses on critical security studies, critical pedagogy, the politics of everyday life as well as creative, experimental and narrative methods in the study of world politics. Before joining CEU she taught at the University of Warwick where she was co-investigator of the Wellcome Trust-funded project 'Counterterrorism in the NHS: Evaluating Prevent Duty Safeguarding by Midlands Healthcare Providers.’ She was awarded the British International Studies Association’s Excellence in Teaching International Studies Prize in 2017. More recently, she published a research monograph Writing the Self and Transforming Knowledge in International Relations: Towards a Politics of Liminality (Routledge, 2018) and together with shine choi and Anna Selmeczi, she is co-editor of Critical Methods for the Study of World Politics: Creativity and Transformation (Routledge, 2019). Erzsébet was also the recipient of the CEU Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020.

    PhD in International Politics, Aberystwyth University; MA in International Relations and European Studies, CEU.

Meet Our Students

Our students hail from all over the world, as well as a wide range of previous academic and personal backgrounds -- from economics to anthropology (and more), their diverse perspectives enrich our program's uniquely multidisciplinary curriculum. 

- Class of 2024 -

  • Heba Abusham'a
    Palestine
  • Isaac Alzaghari
    Palestine
  • Karno Dasgupta
    India
  • Aliia Egemberdieva
    Kyrgyzstan
  • Merna Elboghdady
    Egypt
  • Ahmad Hijawi
    Palestine
  • Nilufar Homidova
    Tajikistan
  • Yasmine Raouf
    United States
  • Daniiar Sadykov
    Kyrgyzstan
  • Artyom Sergazinov
    Kazakhstan
  • Khiradmand Sheraliev
    Tajikistan
  • Diana Talantbekova
    Kyrgyzstan
  • Aidin Turganbekov
    Kyrgyzstan
  • Han Thu Ya
    Myanmar
  • Muzhda Bahaduri (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Sarina Culaj (NY Track)
    United States
  • Nicholas Demick (NY Track)
    United States
  • Abdul Ali Ismailzada (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Shigofa Jamal (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Shahla Muradi (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Istiqlal Safi (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Shaista Shams (NY Track)
    Afghanistan
  • Zhonghan (Jonathan) Xu (NY Track)
    China

- Class of 2023 -

  • Nadia Abdulridha
    Institute for Economics and Peace
    United States
  • Raghd Adwan
    1for3
    Palestine
  • Anas Akbar Ali
    OSUN Civic Engagement Initiative
    Pakistan
  • Brenique Bogle
    Human Rights First
    United States
  • Emina Hadzimuhamedovic
    Centre on Armed Groups
    Bosnia & Herzegovnia
  • Wisdom Kalu
    Libra Group
    Nigeria
  • Daorsa Kamberi
    Oxford Analytica
    Kosovo/Albania
  • Tamara Knyazeva
    Council on Foreign Relations
    Kazakhstan
  • Nay Lin Thu
    US-ASEAN Business Council
    Myanmar
  • Tina Luchetta
    OSUN Civic Engagement Initiative
    United States
  • Wejdan Radayda
    Madre
    Palestine
  • Mahmoud (Bajis) Salim
    CIANA
    Palestine

- Class of 2022 -

  • Okiki Adegoke
    European-American Business Organization
    Nigeria
  • Stephon Camara
    Clara Lionel Foundation
    United States
  • Irene Dumoga
    Welcome to Chinatown
    Ghana
  • Said Ghani
    Charney Research
    Afghanistan
  • Kateryna Koroliuk
    Oxford Analytica
    Ukraine
  • Tsimafei Misiukevich
    Foreign Policy Association
    Belarus
  • Shaheda Mujadeddi
    International Rescue Committee
    Afghanistan
  • Hezbullah Shafaq
    American Association for the International Commission of Jurists (AAICJ)
    Afghanistan
  • Gulnaz Zhakenova
    Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
    Kazakhstan
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