I am an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of New Hampshire, where I also direct the International Affairs program. I previously held fellowship positions with the Dickey Center at Dartmouth (2019-2020) and the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University (2017-2018). For the 2024-2025 academic year, I am a non-resident fellow with the Institute for Future Conflict.
My research in international security focuses on questions about power and relationships. For example, how do actors differentiate between friends, allies, and closest friends, and how do they signal commitment to one another? My research agenda on the arms trade tackles these issues by explaining how the arms trade is a form of signaling in international politics. I also use the arms trade to study diffuse forms of power and core-periphery and patron-client relationships. My work on civil-military relations examines how perceptions and narratives about the military shape the willingness to use force and support different foreign policy options. My policy work and engaged scholarship applies this to questions of the defense industry and military strategy, with a particular interest in understanding how to align arms procurement with likely modes of conflict. My work has been supported by the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, the Global Racial and Social Inequality Lab at UNH, the APSA Political Networks Section, the Minnesota Department of Political Science, and the Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Graduate Group. My dissertation won 2019 Kenneth Waltz Prize for Best Dissertation in International Security. At the University of New Hampshire, I teach courses on international security, national security, international affairs, and research methods. I am also a breast cancer survivor, and volunteer as a patient advocate with the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Breast Advocates, where I get to learn more about and support clinician and researcher studies on breast cancer. |
Contact
email: jennifer (dot) spindel (at) unh.edu Areas of Expertise
DSEI, September 2015
Photo taken at US National Archives
|