Chip Gagnon photo

Chip Gagnon

Professor and Chair, Politics
School: School of Humanities and Sciences
Office: Muller Faculty Center 324, Ithaca, NY 14850
Specialty: International Relations/Comparative Politics

Chip Gagnon is a Professor of Politics and Chair of the Department of Politics.  He teaches courses in the area of international politics.

His research interests include ethnic and nationalist conflict, the phenomenon of political demobilization, democracy promotion, and post-conflict societies. His current research projects focuses on how images of a dangerous outside world are used as a domestic political resource.  He has also worked with anthropologist Stefan Senders on a multi-year project, "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Post-Conflict Studies," based at the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University, where he is a long-term Visiting Scholar.  His professional website is located at chipgagnon.com.

Education: BSFS, Georgetown University; MIA, MA , PhD, Columbia University.

Office hours: Spring 2024, Muller 324

  • MWF 11:15am-12:30pm
  • and by appointment

You an also email me at vgagnon@ithaca.edu.

Courses Taught 

Spring 2024

  • US Foreign Policy - POLT 30600
  • Terrorism and Insurgencies - POLT 33800

Fall 2024

  • Intro to International Relations - POLT 12800
  • Seminar: Nationalism, Populism and Conflict - POLT 40105

Other semesters:

Select Publications

  • “Dayton and right-wing nationalism in the West,” in Godišnjak za sociologiju (Annual Review of Sociology), Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš (Serbia), no.23 (2019).
  • Post-Conflict Studies: An interdisciplinary approach. Co-edited with Keith Brown (Routledge, 2014). Part of Routledge's series Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution.
  • "Democracy Promotion as Mission" in Post-Conflict Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach.
  • Political Science and the Yugoslav Dissolution: The Evolution of a Discipline,” in Florian Bieber, Armina Galijaš and Rory Archer, eds. Debating the End of Yugoslavia (Ashgate, 2014).
  • “Yugoslavia in 1989 and after, in Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, vol.38, no. 1 (January 2010), pp.23-39
  • “Catholic Relief Services, USAID, and Authentic Partnership in Serbia” in Transacting Transition: The micropolitics of democracy assistance in the former Yugoslavia, Keith Brown, ed. (Kumarian Press, 2006), pp.167-188.
  • The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Cornell University Press, 2004), Winner of the American Political Science Association's Prize for the Best Book on European Politics and Society and co-winner of the Best First Book Award of the Council for European Studies.

Grants Awarded

  • US Institute of Peace Solicited Grant Program
  • IREX Short-Term Travel Grants
  • Ithaca College Summer Faculty Research Grant
  • SSRC-MacArther Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Peace and Security in a Changing World
  • Title VIII Research Fellowship in Russian and East European Studies

To access my website, click here.