The Senior Program

Senior majors in government complete a senior thesis and a research paper, working closely with a faculty member in the department. In the Senior Program, students draw on their accumulated skills and knowledge to produce focused, high-level scholarship on a specific topic or problem.

Recent senior projects in government include:

• An Invisible Poison: Examining Childhood Lead Poisoning in Utica, New York
• Privacy of Generative AI: A Study on Contextual Integrity
• From Eco-Utopia to Reality: Building a Praxis of Social Ecology
• Trust in the Face of Corruption: Explaining Legitimacy in Peru and Ecuador
• A Europe of Nations: A Study of Right-Wing Populist Leaders in the European Union
• PFAS - Forever Chemicals - How Could the Precautionary Principle Be Used in the PFAS Debate?
• Theorizing Anti-Democratic Ideology in the Republican Party
• Shelters or Tents? Exploring Subnational Variation in Community Response at the U.S.-Mexico Border
• State, Economy, and the Self in the Thought of Azikiwe and Awolowo

World Politics Honors theses:

• Unpacking the US Friend-Shoring Practice in the Critical Mineral Sector: A Case Study of the Mineral Security Partnership
• Can the Military Experiences of Leaders Account for Cold War 2.0? A Quantitative Analysis of Russian-American Relations from 2000 to 2022
• Personalism, Hollow Institutions, and Russian Military Failures in Ukraine
• Europe’s “Hamiltonian Moment”? The Integrative Potential of Crises in the European Union
• US and China Relations: From Trade War to Tech War
• Effects of War on Individual Senses of Nationalism: A Study of Ukrainians Post-Invasion
• Rural Reach Upstages Foreign Funding: State Capacity in Senegal and Zambia