Sam Bell (associate professor) visited Australian National University in Canberra as a participant in K-State’s Oz to Oz program in March. Bell presented research at ANU and continued his scholarly work with Richard Frank, lecturer at ANU, on a series of projects linking governmental transparency, electoral violence and the onset of civil war.
While in Canberra, Bell also laid the groundwork for future research on human rights and electoral protests with another ANU faculty member, Svitlana Chernykh. Chernykh earned a Master of Arts in political science from K-State in 2004, graduating before Bell joined the department. The two met for the first time in Australia and soon discovered a range of potentially fruitful areas of research collaboration.
“The trip provided a great opportunity to bridge many of my research interests with those of Dr. Frank and Dr. Chernykh,” Bell said. “It hopefully marks the start of long-term collaborations with both of them. Bringing together my research interests with both Rich’s and Svitlana’s has some really great advantages. One is that there has been very little work combining the kinds of research questions that I ask in regards to human rights, transparency, and NGOs with election research.”
In addition, in June Bell gave an invited talk at a workshop on “The Territorial Dimensions of Armed Conflict” at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He presented a research paper and was also featured on the workshop’s keynote roundtable which was held in the University of Tennessee’s Toyota Auditorium.