Sangmin Bae is an associate professor of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern Illinois University. Through the Abe Fellowship supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, she served as a visiting scholar at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and at the Human Security Program of the University of Tokyo in 2010. She teaches and does research in the areas of human rights, human security, international organizations, and East Asian politics. She has published in various journals including Comparative Politics, International Journal of Human Rights, Asian Affairs, Pacific Affairs, International Politics, and Human Rights Review, among others. She is the author of When the State No Longer Kills: International Human Rights Norms and Abolition of Capital Punishment (SUNY Press, 2007). More bio
David Leaman is Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University. His current teaching areas include comparative politics, Latin American politics, democratization theories, and the politics of globalization. His interests include topics related to post-authoritarian politics such as democratization, neo-populism, and post-civil war participation. He has had a long-time secondary interest in religion and politics. Dr. Leaman has published his work in various journals including Studies in Comparative International Development, Latin American Research Review, Illinois Political Science Review, MACLAS Latin American Essays, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Indiana Journal of Political Science, among others.
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Martyn de Bruyn is an assistant professor in Political Science at Northeastern Illinois University. He specializes in the study of comparative regional integration and institutional reform of the European Union. He has written on federalism and constitutionalization in the European Union, direct democracy and the use of referendums to ratify EU treaties, European confidence and trust building experiences and its implications for the inter-Korean relations, inter regionalism and the EU as global player. His work has been published in Asia Europe Journal, Contemporary Political Society, The Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and On Korea. He serves as an international editorial board member of Contemporary Political Society. His current research, entitled “ASEM and the Bridging of the Human Security Gap,” will be included in an edited volume, Regional Organizations as Global Players. More bio
Nancy Underwood is a research assistant to the Human Security Network Project at the Department of Political Science
After thirty years in the fine jewelry business, Nancy's second career as a college student continues as she earns her graduate degree as a Master's student of Political Science. She is active both on campus and off as she cultivates this new area of her life. The study of political science satisfies her interest in the complicated and intricately woven patterns of peoples and their governments. It is Nancy's plan to be a part of insuring that the most basic intrinsic needs of individuals is guaranteed as they realize their wonderful lives within the constructs of society and that their governments.
