Preceptors
Preceptors are advanced Ph.D. students who work with CIR students individually and in small groups to help them in completing the Committee's degree requirements. Particularly, preceptors help students select an MA topic and advise them in the process of writing their thesis.
Anne Holthoefer
Anne Holthoefer is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science. Her research interests include international relations theory and political theory and their application to the study of international institutions, international law, and global governance. In the past, Anne has worked on the legitimacy of humanitarian interventions and the mechanisms through which international law shapes state behavior. She is currently working on her dissertation, which investigates how international institutions are created. In particular she studies how the growing legalization of inter-state relations and an increasing demand for the definition and prosecution of international crimes led to the creation of the International Criminal Court. Anne is also interested in questions of justice, morality, and ethics in international relations, the application of interpretive methods, and the history of International Relations as a discipline. In her free time, Anne loves to observe anarchy in action by supervising her two kids at the playground. A student of the interplay of agency and structure, she is fascinated by attempts to tame this anarchy through positive reinforcement of norms, rules and the occasional intervention of a benign hegemon.
Jonathan Obert
Jonathan Obert is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science specializing in International Security and Comparative Politics. His work focuses on the question of violence: how it is organized and how its use changes over time. More specifically, his dissertation investigates the process of violence monopolization and the comparative development of police and military institutions. Jonathan addresses these questions using organizational theory, historical research and network analysis, but is interested in a range of methodologies, including game theory and computational modeling. He is fascinated by epistemological uses and limits of rational choice theory and how we can best analyze decision-making in complex and chaotic environments. In terms of research, Jonathan focuses on strategic / doctrinal change in the military, civilian-military relations, civil and ethnic war, crime and social control, contentious politics, and theories of collective action. He has a particular interest in the human ecology literature in criminology and its applications for thinking about state violence, as well as how the built environment interacts with social life more generally. Previously, he has written on constitutional change in Imperial Germany and Bismarck’s approach to strategic action. When not working, Jonathan is usually buying book, traveling, or spending time with his wife, though he has recently taken up the glorious hobby of stunt-kite flying, which seems to occupy more and more of his time.
Matthias Staisch
Matthias Staisch is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science. He holds a Magister in Political Science, Modern History, and Public Law from Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet Tuebingen. Before beginning his doctoral studies, he was a research associate and instructor at Tuebingen’s Center for International Relations and Peace Research. Matthias specializes in International Relations and Comparative Politics. In addition to his dissertation on international leadership, he is currently working on article-length projects on the politics of audience costs communication, the widely lamented theory-praxis gap in International Relations research, and the role of infrastructural power in processes of group formation. Methodologically, Matthias draws on a variety of network analytic, interpretive, and historic tools. When he is not enjoying the view from his office, he is most likely drinking espresso / reading at one of his favorite coffee shops, working out, or quite honestly, sleeping. Selected Publication: International Organization: Polity, Policy, and Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006 (with Volker Rittberger and Bernhard Zangl).
