Renaissance Park

1135 Tremont Street | Boston MA | 02120

2018 BOSTON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE

Friday, February 23, 2018

REGISTRATION & OPENING REMARKS ROOM

8:00 – 8:30 Registration and Breakfast 909
Introduction:
Katharine Petrich, President, Security Working Group, Northeastern
8:30 – 8:50 Opening Remarks: 909
John Portz, Department of Political Science, Northeastern
Mai’a Cross, Department of Political Science, Northeastern
8:50 – 9:00 Break
CONCURRENT ROUNDTABLES: EARLY STAGE PAPERS
I) Tactics and Strategy of Armed Actors
Chair: Summer Marion, Northeastern University
Discussant: Rita Konaev, Tufts University

“The Politics of Security in Ninewa: Preventing an ISIS Resurgence”

Julie Ahn, Maeve Campbell, and Pete Knoetgen, Harvard University
909
“The Prevalence of Sexual Violence against Female Aid Workers”
Meredith Blake, Tufts University
“Strategic Miscalculation: Why Do Insurgent Groups Seek to Shift to
Conventional Tactics Despite Previous Success as Guerrillas?”
Katharine Petrich, Northeastern University

II) Comparative National Security

Chair: Maria Robson, Northeastern University
Discussant: Kaija Schilde, Boston University

“The Causes and Consequences of Declinism”

9:00 – 10:45 Robert Ralston, University of Minnesota 201B
“EU External Borders and Migration”
Alice Verticelli, Northeastern University
“Maskirovka and Russian Smart Power”
Adam Wood, Northeastern University

III) Foreign Policy Decision-Making

Chair: Matt Simonson, Northeastern University
Discussant: Julie Garey, Northeastern University

“The Effect of Bureaucratic Politics on Informed Post-Conflict Stabilization”

Frances Duffy, UNC Chapel Hill
956
“No Victory, No Peace: Withdrawing U.S. Marines from Beirut, 1983-1984”
Brad Potter and Alexandra Evans, Harvard University
“Killing the Chicken to Scare the Monkey: Explaining Chinese Coercion in
the South China Sea (1990-2015)”
Ketian Zhang, MIT

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2018 BOSTON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Friday, February 23, 2018

CONCURRENT ROUNDTABLES: EARLY STAGE PAPERS (CONTINUED) ROOM

IV) Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency
Chair: Justin Haner, Northeastern University
Discussant: Joseph Brown, UMass Boston

“Military Intervention and Civilian Victimization”

Meg Guliford, Tufts University
“Deadly Dates: The Effect of Holy Days on Terrorism” 310
Caleb Lucas, Michigan State University
“Opportunities and Limitations of Countering Extremism Online”
Marina Shalabi, Tufts University
“Governance, Grievance, and Rebel Support in Civil War”
Andres Uribe, University of Chicago
9:00 – 10:45
V) Security in the International System
Chair: Garrett Morrow, Northeastern University
Discussant: Mai’a Cross, Northeastern University

“Revisiting Limited Nuclear War”

Robert Cantelmo, Cornell University
201C
“International Institutions: A Place for Middle Powers in the Global System”
Julie George, Cornell University
“Cooperation, Competition, and Compromise: The Influence of Technical
Experts on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”
Henrietta Toivanen, Princeton University

10:45-11:00 Break
PANEL I: The U.S. on the World Stage
Chair: Summer Marion, Northeastern University
Discussant: Anne Sartori, MIT

“Fiddling for the Devil: Failures of Cooperation and Intervention in Rwanda

and Prospects for Future Diplomatic/Military Coordination”
Zachary Agatstein, Northeastern University
“Varieties of Base Contestation: Anti-U.S. Base Protests in South Korea and
11:00 – 12:30 Japan, 2000-2015” 909
Claudia Kim, Boston University
“Geopolitics, Power Transition and Sino-U.S. Relations”
Ruizhi Pang, Boston University
“Navies, Merchants, Mercenaries: How the Private Sector Created and
Defeated Somali Piracy”
Jan Stockbruegger, Brown University

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2018 BOSTON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Friday, February 23, 2018

LUNCH AND KEYNOTE ROOM

Introduction: Matt Simonson, Northeastern University
12:30 – 1:30 909
Keynote Address: Roger Petersen, MIT
1:30 – 1:45 Break
PANEL II: Terrorist Group Dynamics
Chair: Katharine Petrich, Northeastern University
Discussant: Max Abrahms, Northeastern University

“When Borders Don’t Matter for Terrorists: The Extra/Regional

Perspective”
Christian Picard, Université Laval
“The Predictive Capability of Natural Disasters on Terrorist Attacks”
1:45 – 3:15 Lieselotte Siegenthaler, Middlebury Institute / Unicorn Strategies 909
“Blood and Scripture: How the IS Frames Religion in Violent Video
Propaganda”
Matthew Sweeney and Meghan Kubit, UMass Lowell
“Anti-Social Networks: The Effects of Violent Group Cooperative Networks
Structure on Capacity for Violence, and Survival”
Laila Wahedi, Georgetown University

3:15 – 3:30 Break

PANEL III: Militant Objectives and Behavior
Chair: Matt Simonson, Northeastern University
Discussants: Vera Mironova, University of Maryland / Harvard University
Philipp Hunziker, Harvard / Northeastern University

“Wedded to Warfare: Marriage as a Tool for Non-State Armed

Organizations”
Phoebe Donnelly, Tufts University
“Rogue Guns: Explaining Variation in (Un)Reliability of State-Sponsored
3:30 – 5:00 Armed Groups” 909
Sara Plana, MIT
“Information and Communication Technologies, Wartime Informing, and
Insurgent Violence”
Andrew Shaver, Dartmouth College
“The Geography of Secession: How Differences in Governability Across
Territory Shape Rebel Goals”
Rob Williams, UNC Chapel Hill

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND HAPPY HOUR

5:00 Concluding Remarks 909
5:15 Happy Hour at nearby venue

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2018 BOSTON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Friday, February 23, 2018

Luncheon Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Roger Petersen
Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Roger Petersen holds BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. He has
taught at MIT since 2001 and is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science.
Petersen focuses on within-state conflict and violence.
He has written three books: Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment
in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Western
Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (Cambridge University
Press, 2011).
He is currently working on a manuscript entitled “A Social Science Guide to the Iraq
Conflict.” He teaches classes on military intervention, conflict and violence, and emotions in
politics.

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