V. Spike Peterson

V. Spike Peterson is a Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy with courtesy appointments in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Institute for LGBT Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, and International Studies. She is also an Associate Fellow, Gender Institute, London School of Economics (2008-2011). She edited and contributed to Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (1992) and co-authored (with Anne Sisson Runyan) Global Gender Issues (1999/1993); the third (and completely revised) edition has recently been published as Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium (2010). Her book, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies (2003), introduced an alternative analytics for examining intersections of ethnicity/race, class, sex/gender and national hierarchies in the context of global restructuring. Her current research investigates informalization and ‘coping, combat and criminal economies’ in conflict zones. She has published more than fifty journal articles, reviews and book chapters on the topics of feminist international relations theory, global political economy, nationalism, democratization, heterosexism, human rights, and critical poststructuralist and feminist theory.

Peterson has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grant (1996), a Fulbright Scholarship for research in the Czech Republic (1997), a Udall Center Public Policy Fellowship (2007), and a Rockefeller Bellagio Scholarly Residency (2008). She has held the position of Visiting Research Scholar at Australian National University (1995), University of Bristol (1998), University of Göteborg (2000) and the London School of Economics (2007, 2008). She has guest lectured at numerous universities in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe and been an invited speaker at international conferences in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Peterson currently serves as an Academic Associate of the Atlantic Council of the United States and on the editorial boards of International Feminist Journal of Politics; International Theory; Globalizations; Journal of Women, Politics and Policy; New Political Science; Politics & Gender; Palgrave Studies in International Relations; Westview’s “Dilemmas in World Politics” Series; and Routledge’s “Review of International Political Economy” Series. She received the national Mentor Award of the Society for Women in International Political Economy (2000), as well as the Provost’s General Education Teaching Award (2001) and the Magellan Circle Award for Teaching Excellence (2008) at the University of Arizona. She regularly teaches a General Education course (INDV 101: Politics of Difference: Race/Ethnicity, Class, Gender and Sexualities), undergraduate courses in Politics and Theory that are cross-listed with Gender and Women’s Studies, and graduate seminars on contemporary social theory and global political economy.

Research Interests:  International relations theory; global political economy; gender and politics; contemporary social theory (critical, postmodern, postcolonial, feminist theory, emphasizing intersectional analysis)