Ethan Katsh, professor emeritus of Legal Studies, was a keynote speaker at the 10th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Chennai, India from Feb. 7-9. ODR2011 brings "together the world's leading practitioners, academics, theorists, and online negotiation application developers, to share information, and to create a vehicle for ODR education."

Stuart Shulman, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass-based Qualitative Data Analysis Program, gave lectures on "Measuring Validity in Annotation" at the University of Illinois Chicago and Northwestern University on February 3 & 4.

Professor Bruce Desmarais has recently published two articles on political methodology. The first, co-authored with Skyler Cranmer, a political scientist at UNC Chapel Hill, is currently available in the journal Political Analysis. Click here to read "Inferential Network Analysis with Exponential Random Graph Models." (may require journal subscription).

Jillian Schwedler, associate professor of political science, commented in a story about how King Abdullah II of Jordan appears to be one of the least threatened leaders among the countries in the Middle East facing popular unrest. According to Schwedler, Jordan does not have the same level of dissent that is found in other countries in the region. 

Professor Schwedler is an expert on protest and policing in Jordon. She is currently completing work on a manuscript, tentatively titled Protesting Jordan: Law, Space, Dissent.