Douglas Mercado, a visiting lecturer in public and international affairs, was appointed by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger to the advisory board of the state’s Office of New Americans. Through the 4-year appointment, Mercado will support efforts to assist refugees and immigrants in Virginia.
“This appointment marks a continuation of my decades of professional engagement supporting refugees, internally displaced persons, and disaster-impacted communities around the world,” Mercado said. “My experience with humanitarian assistance agencies has allowed me to witness firsthand the significant challenges faced by individuals and families who are forcibly displaced and have to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar environments.”
According to Mercado, in places across the globe, people who are forced to relocate do their best to put down new roots, applying “considerable skills and resources to work to assimilate to their new situations.” But many need help – from their new neighbors and governments – to fully integrate and begin to thrive.
“It’s no different for immigrants and refugees arriving in Virginia,” he said. “With my appointment, I hope to make a contribution towards reducing obstacles, providing access to essential services, and increasing opportunities for our newly arrived neighbors.”
Ethan B. Kapstein, executive director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and a lecturer with rank of professor, received a $330,000 grant from the Department of Defense’s Defense Security Cooperation University to pursue research on international armaments cooperation over the next two years.
“Given the deteriorating global security environment, and ongoing major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, countries are scrambling to produce and acquire the weapons their armed forces require,” Kapstein said. “My research aims to examine the conditions under which globalizing production through such cooperative arrangements as joint-ventures or co-production yields efficiency gains and greater output. My focus is on such arrangements among the Western allies, which have engaged in many collaborative programs over the years, with mixed success. Highlighting the factors that drive success is a key issue that I hope to address.”
Kapstein is also spending the fall in Germany as a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He recently joined former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton and two German speakers on a panel in Dresden discussing trans-Atlantic relations. Kapstein recently traveled to Oslo, Norway, and is scheduled to speak with policymakers and academics in Germany and France in the weeks to come.
“While European security is not top-of-mind in the U.S. given the Iran War and ongoing challenges in managing the bilateral relationship with China, I’m finding it incredibly enriching — and challenging — to participate in discussions with policymakers and citizens in a number of countries who are grappling with what they believe are existential issues given Russian aggression,” he said. “Further, as I’ll be teaching a Policy Task Force next spring on European security, being based in Berlin will have spillover effects into the classroom as well.”
G. John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs, was selected for the prestigious Fowler Hamilton Research Fellowship at Christ Church, one of Oxford University’s colleges, for the 2027-28 academic year. He will use the time to work on a book on the sources of rules-based order in international relations.
This will be Ikenberry’s fourth engagement with Oxford. In 2013-14, he was the 72nd Eastman Professor at Balliol College; in 2018-19, he was a visiting fellow at All Souls College; and in 2023-24, he was a visiting fellow at Corpus Christi College.
“Sort of like visiting an old friend, I have found Oxford a congenial place to return to from time to time to pursue my research and scholarly collaborations,” Ikenberry said.
Tanushree Goyal, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs, received the 2026 Lawrence Longley Award from the Representation and Electoral Systems of the American Political Science Association for her paper “Local political representation as a pathway to power: A natural experiment in India,” published in the American Journal of Political Science. The award is given for the best article on representation and electoral systems published in the previous year.
“The paper was among the journal’s top 10 most-cited articles in 2025, and it was really nice to see it being recognized as valuable from different quarters,” said Goyal, a Princeton SPIA faculty member since 2022. “It is also a promising sign that the discipline is recognizing frontier scholarship on gender and politics.”
Photos courtesy of Douglas Mercado, Ethan B. Kapstein, G. John Ikenberry, and Tanushree Goyal.