For the past year and a half I have been working on a research project (funded primarily by the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University) with Prof. Donald Sylvan at Ohio State:  “Problem Representation and Conflict Dynamics in Northern Ireland and the Middle East:  Domestic Political Processes With International Impact.”  We are currently submitting an article for review at the Journal of Conflict Resolution.  This fall we will work on a second article that grew out of our findings of the first, which deals with how a leader’s audience affects the kind of problem representation he uses (problem representation is a concept concerning how a leader perceives aspects of the situation in which he finds himself).

I am engaged in three other projects in addition to the audience effects article noted above.  First, I have been working on a book manuscript that elaborates on the International Studies Quarterly article I published in fall 2001. It deals with the role of leadership framing in identity conflicts and how international involvement promotes the fate of more inclusive or more exclusive leaders.  Second, I am working with three others to put together an edited volume on the role of intra-group dynamics in nationalist conflict.  We all presented on a panel at the American Political Science Association meetings in Boston on August 29 (2002), and will meet with publishers at the International Studies Association conference in February 2003.  Third, I initiated a new project this summer with a paper I presented (with Dr. Chris Scholl at Wheeling Jesuit University) at a conference in Berlin.  The title is “Ancient Hatreds or Manipulable Leaders:  Shifting Problem Representations in Cases of Internal Conflict,” and it will include a comparative case study of how the Haiti and Rwanda conflicts were portrayed in the rhetoric of the U.S. president and foreign policy leadership.  This work is in the early stage of data collection.