Penksa Awarded Follow-On Fulbright Grant

The U.S. Department of State has awarded Susan Penksa, Westmont professor of political science, a follow-on Fulbright grant, allowing her to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina to build on the work of her 2007 fellowship and further the Fulbright mission of worldwide mutual understanding.

Penksa will be in Bosnia and Herzegovina March 14-28, presenting research and lecturing at the University of Sarajevo and the University of Tuzla, initiating a new research project focused on post-conflict reform in Bosnia and its future accession to the European Union and NATO, and conducting a feasibility study regarding the establishment of a Westmont study abroad program in Sarajevo.

Penksa, an international security specialist, is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for European Studies (IES) in Brussels, Belgium, where she is co-authoring a book, “The European Union in Global Security: The Politics of Impact.”

With 15 years of applied research and field experience, Penksa has an extensive consulting practice with national governments, the EU, NATO, UN, and NGOs. Recent consulting projects include advising the U.S. about EU cooperation in crisis response, best practices for security system reform in Afghanistan, and a consultancy for USAID-Pakistan on gender and economic development.

A frequent contributor to strategic dialogue on security and defense policies, Penksa has spoken at policy seminars sponsored by the Presidency of the EU, the European Parliament and the UK Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Penksa, who received her doctorate in political science from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, has written many publications and made numerous presentations about trans-Atlantic security; EU foreign, security and defense policies; security system reform; civil-military relations in peace support operations; conflict prevention, peace-building and crisis response; conflict transformation; and gender as a cross-cutting issue of security and development. Her work in conflict areas has taken her to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Pakistan, and the Republic of Georgia; later this spring, she will travel to the Middle East and the Democratic Republic of Congo.