Principal Investigator
John O'Loughlin
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado
John O'Loughlin is College Professor of Distinction, Professor of Geography and Faculty Research Associate in the Political and Economic Change Program of the
Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the Pennsylvania State University in
1973. His research interests are in the spatial analysis of conflict including the
relationship between climate/environmental change and conflict as well as in the
political geography of the post-Soviet Union, including Russian and Ukrainian
geopolitics, Eurasian quasi-states, and ethno-territorial nationalisms. He has also
published on the diffusion of democracy, electoral geography, and the electoral
geography of Nazi Germany. He is editor-in-chief of Political Geography. He teaches undergraduate classes in Political Geography,
Geographies of Global Change, and the Geography of Western Europe, and graduate classes in Political Geography.
Co-Principal Investigators
Gerard Toal
Public and International Affairs
Virginia Tech University
Dr. Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail) is Director of the Masters of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech's campus in Old Town Alexandria and Professor of Government and International Affairs in Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs. He grew up on the border region between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and was educated in political geography at the National University of Ireland, the University of Illinois, and Syracuse University (Ph D, 1989). He is the author of Critical Geopolitics (Routledge, 1996) and a co-editor of A Companion to Political Geography (Blackwell, 2002) and The Geopolitics Reader (2nd edition Routledge, 2006) among other works. He also serves as Associate Editor of the journal Geopolitics.
Michael D. Ward
University of Washington
Department of Political Science
Michael D. Ward is Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He is an affiliate of the Center for Statistics and Social Sciences. His primary interests are in international relations (spanning democratization, globalization, international commerce, military spending, as well as international conflict and cooperation), political geography, as well as mathematical and statistical methods.
