From the beginning, the vision of the CLASS Center developed out of interaction among faculty and graduate students who shared intellectual interests in comparative socio-legal study. The graduate students from multiple disciplines who participated in those formative years provided the incentive for investment in the CLASS vision and the model for the Graduate Fellows program that was initiated in spring, 2001. At the heart of this vision is the aspiration to provide students with a curriculum, a cohort of faculty mentors, and a range of intellectual experiences that cultivate multi-disciplinary understandings serving to enhance, rather than replace, disciplinary-based education in socio-legal study. The result is an opportunity for one of the most exciting, diverse, and dynamic graduate programs of coordinated study about law and society in the nation.

CLASS Graduate Fellows Alumni

Lauren Basson (Political Science)

Christine Bond (Sociology)

Nora Dahlman (Political Science)

Jeff Dudas (Political Science)

Rose Ernst (Political Science)

Sarah Fort (Geography)

Bruce Hoffman (Sociology)

Vince Jungkunz (Political Science)

Scott Lemieux (Political Science)

Tamir Moustafa (Political Science)

Claire Rasmussen (Political Science)

Yüksel Sezgin (Political Science)

Patricia Woods (Middle East Studies)

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Graduate Student Biographies

Anne Bloom Graduate Student e-mail:

Anne Bloom is a graduate student in the Political Science Department. She received her B.A. from Mount Saint Mary's College and her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law. Before returning to graduate school, she worked as a public interest lawyer in Washington, D.C. Her research interests include transnational legal mobilization and the politics of cause lawyering. She is currently writing her dissertation, "Taking on Goliath: Can U.S. Courts Give Workers a Transnational Voice?" Her recent publications include "The 'Post-Attitudinal Moment': Judicial Policy Making Through the Lens of New Institutionalism" (forthcoming, Law and Society Review) and "Taking on Goliath: Why Personal Injury Litigation May Represent the Future of Transnational Cause Lawyering" (in Cause Lawyering and the State in the Global Era (Oxford University Press 2001)).

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Christine Bond Graduate Student e-mail: cewbond@u.washington.edu

Christine Bond is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology. She received a B.A. and M.Soc.Sc. in Sociology and a LL.B from the University of Queensland, Australia. Before coming to the United States for graduate studies, she worked as a research officer for the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission, where her duties included evaluations of policing programs. Her research interests focus on analyses of various forms of social control, and sociology of law. Current research projects include a study of the role of gender in juvenile justice decision-making.

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Nora Dahlman Graduate Student e-mail: njd@u.washington.edu

Nora Dahlman is a graduate student in the Political Science Department. She received her B.A. from Gonzaga University and her J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School. She is a member of the New York and Connecticut Bars and, prior to commencing her graduate studies, spent several years as a finance attorney in New York City, concentrating on international transactions including in South America and Japan. Nora's research interests focus on Latin America and the comparative opportunities for mobilization around gender issues in that region.

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Jeff Dudas Graduate Student e-mail: jdudas@u.washington.edu

Jeffrey Dudas is a PhD candidate in the department of Political Science. His dissertation project examines the politics of Native American treaty rights claims. He recently published an article in Studies in Law, Politics, and Society that explores the role of tribal governments within American political and legal culture. Jeffrey has participated in numerous academic conferences, including the annual meetings of the Law and Society Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the American Political Science Association.

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Rose Ernst Graduate Student, Political Science e-mail: ere@u.washington.edu

Rose Ernst earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science in August 2007, and is now a Visiting Professor at Seattle University in urban politics and public policy. She received her B.A. from Cornell University. Her research interests include the politics of race and gender, American politics and public law with an emphasis on social movement and critical race theory. Rose's dissertation project examined the mechanisms at work in the decisions of social movement groups to respond to stereotyped frames that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable among them. She explored whether the contemporary responses of welfare rights movement groups to the public identity of members stem from the historical realities of race, gender and class intersections of framing "work", responsibility and independence of women.

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Sarah Fort Graduate Student

Sarah Fort is a Doctoral student in the Geography Department. She received her BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University and her MSc in Geography from the London School of Economics. Her research is focused on the Middle East and her interests include refugee policy, migration, citizenship rights, and nationalism. After working with Adalah (Justice), a legal organization promoting Arab minority rights in Israel, and the Arab Human Rights Association in Nazareth, Israel, she began her doctoral research at the UW. She received fellowship and grant support from the Chester Fritz Grant, the Mellon Seed Grant and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for Advanced Turkish. She is currently comparing the citizen rights and national identities of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Armenian citizens of Turkey.

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Scott Lemieux Graduate Student email: slemieux@u.washington.edu

Scott Lemieux is a graduate student in the department of political science. A native of Canada, he received a BA and MA from in Political Science from McGill University in Montreal. His research interests are in American and comparative public law, as well as American politics, comparative politics, and political theory. His current research includes a comparative study of the political impact of feminist litigation in Canada and the United States.

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Tamir Moustafa Graduate Student email: moustafa@u.washington.edu

Tamir Moustafa is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science. His research interests lie at the intersection of comparative law, political economy, and state-society relations. Tamir is currently writing his dissertation, "Law Versus the State: The Expansion of Judicial Power in Egypt" and received fellowship support for his research through the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Sciences Program. His dissertation examines the impact of the newly founded Egyptian Constitutional Court upon Egypt's political and economic landscape. He assesses the promise as well as the limitations of political reform through judicial channels and draws general conclusions on the circumstances under which we are likely to see the strengthening of judicial institutions in developing states. Tamir's publications include "Conflict and Cooperation between the State and Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt" in The International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge University Press).

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Yüksel Sezgin Graduate Student, Political Science e-mail: ysezgin@u.washington.edu

Yüksel Sezgin earned his PhD from the Department of Political Science. He holds a BA in International Relations & Law from the University of Ankara, and MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of London, SOAS and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation examined the impacts of legal pluralism on state-society relations and human rights by specifically looking into religious personal status regimes in Israel, Egypt and India. Yüksel's articles on political religion, regional affairs and comparative law has appeared on several journals including Studies in Law, Politics & Society, Journal of Legal Pluralism, Review of International Affairs, Turkish Studies, Turkish Yearbook of International Relations, Insight Turkey , and Perceptions.

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Patricia J. Woods CLASS Graduate Fellow email: pjwoods@polisci.ufl.edu

Patricia J. Woods is the first graduate student to complete her Ph.D. as a CLASS Graduate Fellow. Having received an M.A. in comparative religion before advancing in the interdisciplinary field of Middle East studies, her fields of interest are: comparative politics; judicial institutions and political change; law, religion, and state; women and politics in developing states, all with a particular interest in Israel and the Muslim world. After extensive fieldwork in Israel supported by grants from SSRC and NSF, she defended her dissertation in July, 2001; it is entitled "Courting the Court: Social Visions, State Authority, and the Religious Law Conflict in Israel." Woods accepted a tenure track position as Assistant Professor of Political Science and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, beginning August 2001. She is currently on research leave as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University until June 2004.

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