Our Staff

CCE Fellows

Juris Pupcenoks
Juris Pupcenoks is an assistant professor of political science at Marist College, NY. A specialist in international relations and comparative politics, Juris completed a B.A. degree at Westminster College (MO), and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Delaware. He previously taught at the University of Delaware and Washington College (MD). He has conducted field research in Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, Italy and the US, and published in journals including International Interactions, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Middle East Journal, and Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. His monograph Western Muslims and Conflicts Abroad was published by Routledge in 2016. Broadly, his research focuses on understanding how different groups (be it diasporas, Americans or Europeans) mobilize politically and react to conflicts abroad. More specific research interests include diasporic and ethnic politics, humanitarian intervention, international security, causes of political violence, politics of Muslims and minorities in the West, and transatlantic relations. He is fluent in Latvian (native) and Russian, intermediate in French, and is currently learning Mandarin Chinese. His hobbies include traveling, running and tennis.
David Woolner
David B. Woolner is the Senior Fellow and Resident Historian of the Roosevelt Institute, Senior Fellow of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College, and Professor of History at Marist College. He is the author of The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace, (Basic Books, 2017) and is editor/co-editor of five books, including Progressivism in America: Past Present and Future (Oxford, 2016), a work based on a conference the Roosevelt Institute organized in collaboration with the CCE and the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin. Woolner has organized a number of CCE events in collaboration with the Roosevelt Institute and FDR Presidential Library, including “US-Russian Relations from Tehran to Yalta and Beyond,” an international symposium held at Bard in the fall of 2018 aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the historic ties and tensions inherent in the US-Russian relationship. The symposium featured a dual exhibition of documents, photographs and film footage drawn from the FDR Library selected by a group of Bard students enrolled in a special topics course on US-Russian relations during WWII. Additional historical materials were provided by the Yeltsin Presidential Library, in St. Petersburg, where the main exhibition was housed, supported by a smaller student-curated exhibition held at the Bard College Library and online. Woolner is one of the original drafters of the CCE’s U.S. Summer Foreign Policy Institute, has been visiting professor at Bard (fall 2012 & 2018), and has remained a member of the faculty of the Bard Prison Initiative since 2011. An advisor to the Ken Burns film, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, and frequent commentator on the link between the past and the present, his media appearances include interviews with CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Woolner has held fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge; University College Roosevelt, in the Netherlands; and at University College Dublin. He earned his MA and PhD from McGill University, and his BA, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota.
Kate Flynn
Dr. Kate Flynn has over twenty years in research, teaching, programme development and project delivery. Her expertise covers critical peacebuilding, democratization, ethnic conflict, migration, development, contested heritage, and public policy in divided and transitional societies. Current research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness and impacct of civil society programmes funded by foreign aid. She has worked at universities in South Africa, Ukraine, Israel and the UK, and led research projects covering Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Cyprus. She is also Research Fellow at the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies, Liverpool Hope University, UK.