Our Staff

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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.

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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.

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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.

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James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of of the School of Continuing Education at the American University in Cairo. He previously served as Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Academic Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program - and he taught in Bard’s Political Studies and Global and International Studies programs. Prior to that he served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST. From 2007-2011 he was Vice Chancellor for Policy and Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). At SUNY, he also was director of the Center for International Development and program officer at the Center for Legislative Development. In government, he served on the staff of the New York Commission on Higher Education, the National Security Council staff at the White House and as policy analyst at the New York State Senate. He worked on elections for the United Nations, the African-American Institute and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and has carried out consultancies for USAID in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  He was a Boren Fellow in Morocco and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Tunisia.  He is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Association, serves on the board of the Swedish Program at the Stockholm School of Economics, is on the organizing committee of the 2020 Transatlantic Dialogue at the University of Luxembourg and is a Senior Fellow at the Bard Center for Civic Engagement. He was a board member for the World Affairs Council of the Hudson Valley and has given talks across the US for the American Committees on Foreign Relations.

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Leanne Ussher

Dr. Leanne Ussher is an authority on the topic of local currencies, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain. Leanne is a Research Fellow at Wolfram Blockchain Labs where she is developing blockchain educational content, and soon to be Research Fellow at Copenhagen Business School where she will use network analysis to assess the social and economic impact of local complementary currencies on informal sectors in Kenya. Leanne is an Associate Editor at Frontiers in Blockchain, and advisor to the Economic Space Agency and Hudson Valley Current, two complementary currencies. Leanne has taught economics, finance, and social entrepreneurship at Queens College, City University of New York, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Bard College New York. Outside of academia Leanne was Senior Economist at Consensys working on blockchain ecosystems, and Securities Analyst at the Reserve Bank of Australia.

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Cammie Jones

Originally from Dallas, TX, Cammie has consistently created pathways towards social justice and civic engagement in higher education for over 15 years. She is a first-generation college student and holds a B.S. in Kinesiology from the University of Texas at Austin and a M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Louisiana State University A&M. Cammie is the CEO and Founder of J. Jones Consulting, LLC and also serves as the Bard Center for Civic Engagement and Open Society University Network (OSUN) Senior Fellow. Cammie served as an Assistant and Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Civic Engagement during her prior tenure at Bard. Furthermore she has served in high level executive roles at Dutchess Community College, Marist College and Barnard College. She has taught fall and summer courses on empowerment of women at Bard and OSUN, including Women and Leadership, Women and COVID 19: Activism, Leadership, and Global Engagement, and most recently Women and the Pandemic, to help amplify the voices of the next generation of leaders. She has also organized a number of international and domestic conferences on civic engagement, young leadership development, and the future of women's rights. Cammie has dedicated her life to service and leadership, sitting on several boards and committees for local nonprofits and receiving numerous accolades for her contributions to higher education and community engagement. She recently received the 2021 ATHENA Award from the Chamber Foundation Inc., as well as the 2012 Forty Under 40 Class from the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce, the N4A 2014 Professional Promise Award for Region 1, the AWCC 2017 Forty Under 40 Class, and the 2017 Arc of Dutchess Peggy Martinko Community Trailblazer Award from the Arc of Dutchess.