T/Th 11:45am-1:00pm
Chu’s research and teaching interests focus on the political role of religious institutions, the Catholic Church and global politics, faith diplomacy, religion and international relations theory, inter-religious dialogue, political ideologies (theory and practice), and the political liberalization processes of former and existing communist countries. Her work has been published in Politics and Religion, Democratization, Jou
Currently, she is working on a research project that examines the Catholic Church’s position on global issues. She theorizes how this amounts to an unofficial foreign policy on matters of conflict, peace, climate change, and migration. Applying a constructivist framework to characterize the Catholic Church as a norm entrepreneur, she focuses on how religious institutions can help reorient the way in which state and non-state actors approach international dilemmas. She also is working on projects focusing on the use of faith diplomacy Vietnam, China, and Cuba, and new approaches to inter-religious dialogue between Catholic and Muslim communities.
Previously, Chu was a recipient of a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California, and a member of the Executive Council of the Western Political Science Association (2018-2021). She currently serves as a Country Expert for the University of Gothenburg’s Varieties of Democracy Project (2012-Present) and is on the editorial board of the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities.
COURSES
DWA 101 - International Relations: The Changing Rules of the Game
DWA 237 - Cuba, China, Vietnam: Communism in a Post Communism World
DWA 240 - Comparative Revolutions
DWA 299 - Qualitative Methods and Research Design
DWA 310 - Religion and Politics
DWA 337 - Junior Seminar in International Relations Theory
DWA 490 - Senior Seminar in Diplomacy/World Affairs
