Perry World House Perry World House to Host 7 Postdoctoral Fellows in 2020-21 Academic Year

Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania’s global affairs hub, has announced its 2020-21 cohort of 7 Postdoctoral Fellows. As in previous years, Perry World House selected this fifth class of Fellows based on academic excellence and the global policy relevance of their research.

“Our Postdoctoral Fellows Program sits at the heart of Perry World House: our Fellows advance academic research, shape global policy, strengthen student education, and enrich campus life,” said Michael Horowitz, Interim Director of Perry World House and Professor of Political Science. “This year’s class is an exceptional group of scholars, who will go on to make important and lasting contributions in both the academic and policy communities.”

Perry World House’s Postdoctoral Fellows Program aims to expand the pipeline of new scholars working on critical global issues. In addition to pursuing their own academic research, the Fellows, who spend a year on campus, serve as advisers for undergraduate students pursuing yearlong policy projects and help shape Perry World House colloquia and workshops and other programming.

Meet our 2020-21 Postdoctoral Fellows

Michael Franczak is a historian of American foreign policy and the global economy. His book manuscript The North-South Dialogue: Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy, 1971-1984 shows how global inequality became a threat to U.S. national security. Previously, Franczak was a Henry Chauncey ’57 Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University, where he also taught in the History department. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Boston College and a B.A. from the University of Michigan.

Shae A.K. Frydenlund received her Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research on gender and labor in the Rohingya diaspora has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Frydenlund has published papers in Geoforum, Journal of Cultural Geography, and Himalaya: Journal of the Association of Nepal and Himalaya Studies. She received her M.A. in Geography from University of Colorado Boulder and a B.A. from Colgate University.

Meg K. Guliford will be a Penn Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in residence at Perry World House. Her broad research agenda reflects an interest in political violence, conflict processes, and U.S. foreign policy. Her research has been supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Eisenhower Institute. Guliford’s career in the federal government began as a Presidential Management Fellow for the U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters and has included a civilian deployment to Iraq and work for the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Guliford will receive her Ph.D. in International Relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, her M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Richard J. McAlexander will work with Beth Simmons, the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science and Business Ethics, on Perry World House’s Borders and Boundaries Project, which examines how political life both affects and is affected by border security policies. His primary interests are in political violence, terrorism, nonviolent resistance, imperialism, and the evolution of international borders. McAlexander’s book project, The Politics of Anticolonial Resistance: Violence, Nonviolence and the Erosion of Empire, studies how the British Empire responded to different forms of resistance in its colonies. McAlexander received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, and holds a M.A. in History from Temple University and a B.S. from Drexel University.

Francesca Parente is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Parente’s dissertation analyzes compliance with rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and focuses primarily on the domestic political incentives for non-compliance that exist in Latin America when current governments are asked to confront the human rights abuses of the past. Parente received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and her B.A. from the University of Virginia, where she was also an Echols Scholar.

Lauren Pinson is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Perry World House Borders and Boundaries Project and will continue for a second year. In her first year, Pinson conducted research on government responses to illicit trafficking and public opinion on border issues. She previously worked as a Senior Researcher and Project Manager at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, and as a Visiting Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Pinson, who will receive her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University, earned a M.P.A. and B.A. from the University of Georgia.

Andrea Restrepo-Mieth earned her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. Her work combines insights from Urban Planning and Political Science to improve the equitable and sustainable provision of local public goods and basic services in cities and metropolitan areas in the Global South. Professionally, Restrepo-Mieth has consulted for the World Bank, worked as a researcher for the Center for Sustainable Asian Cities (Singapore) and held short-term positions at UN-Habitat (Laos) and the Asian Development Bank (Cambodia). In addition to her doctorate, Restrepo-Mieth holds a M.P.P. from the Lee Kuan Yew School, National University of Singapore and a B.A. from State University of New York at New Paltz.