On the Issues Episode 53: Mary Beth Altier

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Mary Beth Altier about statebuilding and political violence, using the example of Northern Ireland as a way to examine conflicts and political violence in the Middle East, particularly by way of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Bio

Dr. Mary Beth Altier is a Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2011 and then worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Pennsylvania State University on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.K. government funded project on terrorist disengagement, re-engagement, and recidivism. She also worked as a postdoctoral researcher on a project on civil war and democratization based at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Dr. Altier’s research interests are in international security, foreign policy, political violence, and political behavior. Her recent work centers on the reasons why individuals support the use of political violence in developed and developing democracies as well as why they participate in acts of political violence, especially terrorism. She is also interested in the disengagement and rehabilitation of ex-combatants and identifying empirically based methods for assessing risk of re-engagement. Dr. Altier is preparing a book manuscript based upon her dissertation, which won the 2013 American Political Science Association’s Ernst B. Haas award, and she is also the 2015 recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on European Politics and Society’s Best Paper Award. Her research has been featured in the Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Journal of Strategic Security and she serves on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression.

Professor Altier teaches courses on Transnational Security, Transnational Terrorism, Security Sector Governance and the Rule of Law, and Analytic Skills. In 2017, she received the NYU SPS Excellence in Teaching Award.

You can follow Professor Altier on Twitter @marybethaltier and NYU CGA’s Initiative for the Study of Emerging Threats @ISETNYU.