Senior Graduate Students Share Promising Research in Progress

Our senior PhD students and recent doctoral graduand shared their research at a Research in Progress Seminar (RIPS) on December 4.

PhD candidate Joanna Massie presented on participant transformation during and through Deliberative Mini Publics (DMPs). Her work surveys and typologizes the findings of 39 DMP studies. Focusing specifically on the educative contributions of DMPs, Joanna summarizes the relationship between key deliberative interventions – expertise, inter-participant learning and reason-giving – and their outcomes – changes in opinion, capability and efficacy. She identifies major empirical gaps within the reason-giving side, and further proposes options for standardizing future research.

Dr. Dana Shuqom – who recently defended her PhD – shared a summary of her thesis findings. Dana’s thesis explored Saudi Arabia’s use of tourism as a tool of public diplomacy. Dana also introduced the Narrative Control Mechanism; a political communications model she had developed to summarize the actions taken by states to improve their images among foreign publics.

PhD candidate Joseph Antwi-Boasiako spoke on a co-author article on policy termination in Ghana. While current literature identified ideological and rational (learning) factors for policy termination, Joseph points to external factors to explain termination in developing countries. He draws on Ghana’s Gold4Oil as a theoretically significant case study to show how IMF loan conditionalities brought the Gold4Oil policy to an end despite government narrative suggesting that the policy has managed inflation, exchange rate and the prices of petroleum products.

The RIPs session was well-attended and promoted robust discussion. Visit our web profiles if you would like to know more about graduate student research in the Department of Political Science!