Mentor Post #10

I met with my mentor for probably the last time on Apr. 10, for about half an hour. I had given him my analysis draft to read, which he really liked. He had a couple of suggestions for clarifying my findings, such as why specifically women’s inclusion was not the most influential variable on the durability of the agreement. He also had one correction for me on the concept of ripeness, which I had articulated incorrectly. I told him that I intend to submit the paper to Clocks and Clouds in the fall, and he said he thought I should try for a larger scholarly journal, which, if he is willing to keep advising me and guiding the revision process, I might actually do. I had intended to submit it to the Undergraduate Research Symposium, but unfortunately missed the application deadline because I came down with the flu after attending the March for Our Lives. As an unrelated side note, I highly recommend ALWAYS getting the flu shot. At the end I thanked my mentor for all of his help and guidance over the past year.

Mentor Post #9

I met with my mentor on April 3rd by phone, for about 45 minutes, because he was stuck in Baltimore with terrible weather. I’ve been a little bit behind in my research project because of things happening in my life outside of school, but it was a productive meeting where I updated him on some decisions I had made. I was intending to analyze three agreements within my case of the Northern Ireland conflict, but due to time constraints and my outside issues, I decided I would only be able to do two agreements. We agreed on the Good Friday Agreement and the Sunningdale Agreement, because St. Andrews is usually treated by the literature as simply an addition to the Good Friday Agreement. As a result, I had been having a very difficult time finding sources about it. Now that my research is mostly done, I’m looking forward to filling in my chart of operationalizing questions and actually conducting the analysis.

Mentor Post #8

A couple of weeks ago Professor Esser forwarded Dr. Field an invitation to an event he thought I should go to; it was a faculty research roundtable focusing on an upcoming article by Dr. Ann Tickner, one of the experts in feminist international theory. I attended the talk, which was otherwise attended by professors and PhD students (I was a little intimidated when we all went around the room and introduced ourselves, but everyone was really excited that I was there). It was an incredible experience and I feel like I was exposed to an entire world of feminist IR theory that I didn’t even know existed, because it often is not taught in typical IR classes- which was one of the main points of the talk. A week or two later Dean Jackson visited class, and suggested I reach out to Dr. Tickner personally, which I did. I met with her for about 45 minutes on March 30, and it was one of the most fascinating discussions I’ve ever had. By the end of it I felt like I had met one of my personal heroes, because of the groundbreaking work Dr. Tickner has done for women and on women in IR. She’s also led a remarkable life and in many ways represents what I want to achieve with my life. We discussed my project, and she helped me talk through many of the difficulties I was having with gender in my argument that women’s inclusion increases durability. The issue I was struggling with was that women are not inherently better at negotiation than men, and neither are men better than women- that’s truly comparing apples to oranges, and that kind of argument completely essentializes women rather than recognizing their complexity as human beings. Dr. Tickner helped me articulate that really what I’m arguing is that women, because of their different life experiences as a result of typical gender roles, bring a different perspective and negotiating style to the table. We also discussed the article she had written for the research roundtable, which was titled “Hidden Figures” after the movie on the African American women who worked at NASA and received no credit for their important role in the U.S’s early space exploration. Dr. Tickner told me that after seeing the movie, she loved the title so much she decided to start doing a research project to fit the title- and because her field is women in IR, that was not a difficult thing to do. Ultimately, it was an incredibly inspiring meeting.

Mentor Post #7

I visited with Professor Carolyn Gallaher on Mar. 6, as she is one of the experts in SIS on Northern Ireland- in fact she’s leading a three week class in May on conflict transformation, half of which will actually be in Belfast. I’m applying for the class because I think it’s a wonderful way to get more involved and continue my research with personal experience even after I’ve turned in my final paper. Professor Gallaher and I also talked about my cases, or the agreements I’m focusing on. She suggested I look into the St. Andrews agreement as well, because the more cases I add to my project the higher external validity it has. The St. Andrews agreement was the renegotiation of the Good Friday agreement when it fell apart in the early 2000s, We also talked a little about the Anglo-Irish agreement in the 1980s, but she felt that the St. Andrews agreement might be more relevant because the Anglo-Irish agreement primarily focused on British/Irish relations rather than the issues in Northern Ireland. Finally, Professor Gallaher suggested that I look at more than just women’s inclusion in formal negotiations, because women typically have more of an effect through external, grassroots pressure on peace processes. It was a very productive meeting and I feel a lot clearer about my case selection, which will make it easier going forward in the next couple of weeks as I actually do the research.

Mentor Post #6

Dr. Mislan visited class again on Mar. 6 to discuss case study methodology. This time we focused on our hypotheses, and how our independent, dependent, and intervening variables interact with each other. We drew little boxes and arrows to set up these relationships- for mine, as my IV of women’s inclusion rises, I expect my DV of durability to also rise. Therefore they have a positive relationship. This was an extremely helpful exercise because I was really struggling in writing my methodology section with how to explain the relationships between my variables. Although I have already turned in my methodology section, I intend to go back and revise it pretty soon because Dr. Mislan’s visit helped me clarify my understanding of what I will actually be testing.

Mentor Post #5

I met with Professor Wanis on Feb. 20, and updated him that I was switching to structured, focused case comparison. Luckily, it turns out that Professor Wanis used SFCC for his own dissertation, so he’s really quite familiar with it. We also discussed how I should do more than just the Good Friday Agreement, because SFCC is a comparative methodology. He suggested that I choose different negotiations within the Northern Ireland process, such as the Sunningdale Agreement in the 1970s. This essentially makes the project a within-case comparison, where the peace process as whole is the case and the different agreements themselves are observations within the case. This also gives my project high internal validity- by choosing the same conflict, I can control for a lot of the case-specific variables to peace processes. Peace processes are very complex and dependent on things that are specific to each conflict, which makes focusing on one conflict a more effective way to analyze peace processes.

Mentor Post #4

In class on Feb. 16 Dr. Mislan skyped in to give us a presentation on case study methodology. I’ve been struggling a little bit with my plan for doing a process trace, because I couldn’t really justify its internal or external validity, and I couldn’t come up with a causal mechanism, because the components of durable peace agreements interact with each other rather than cause each other. Dr. Mislan described a different kind of case study methodology, called structured, focused case comparison (SFCC), which is a lot more generalizable than process-tracing. It also is a little simpler than process tracing, which will make it a little easier for me to make the project really strong. I feel a lot better about doing SFCC than I did about doing process tracing.

Mentor Post #3

I met with my mentor, Professor Anthony Wanis, on Feb. 6, for about half an hour. I updated him that I was doing process-tracing, which I hadn’t told him before break because it was somewhat of a last minute decision. I also updated him that I had decided to do a single-case study on Northern Ireland, after the collective advising workshop in class the other day. We also discussed the different types of sources I will need to do a process-trace, such as the actual accord, newspaper articles, personal memoirs (such as that of George Mitchell, which I’ve begun reading), and academic articles. I will look to see if Monica McWilliams, one of the female negotiators, wrote a memoir, and I’ll also look for records of the negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement, if I can find them. I’m a little apprehensive about getting all of the research done, because process-tracing is really in-depth, but if I get started pretty soon it should work out alright.