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Director, Peace and War Center
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice
Travis Morris joined the faculty of Norwich University in 2011. He teaches criminological courses in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and directs NU’s Peace and War Center. Morris holds a Bachelor of Arts in criminology from Northern Illinois University, a Master of Science in criminal justice from Eastern Kentucky University, and a doctorate from the University of Nebraska. He has published on information warfare and the relationship between policing, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and counter-insurgency and is the author of the recent book, “Dark Ideas: How Violent Jihadi and Neo-Nazi Ideologues Have Shaped Modern Terrorism.” He has conducted ethnographic interviews in Yemen and published on how crime intersects with formal and informal justice systems in a socio-cultural context. His research interests include violent extremist propaganda analysis, information warfare, and text network analysis. He is an active teacher in and out of the classroom and has created a series of recent grant-funded student learning trips in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
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Assistant Director, Peace and War Center
Associate Professor of Political Science
Yangmo Ku is Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Peace and War Center (PaWC) at Norwich University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from George Washington University and taught in the School of International Service at American University before joining the faculty of Norwich University in July 2012. His research and teaching focus lies in the denuclearization of North Korea, East Asian politics and security, US foreign policy, and the politics of memory and reconciliation in East Asia and Europe. His coauthored book, titled Politics in North and South Korea: Political Development, Economy, and Foreign Relations, was published by Routledge in 2018. He serves as founding Editor of an academic journal, titled the Journal of Peace and War Studies, and co-editor of PaWC’s forum—Voices on Peace and War. His previous research has also appeared in numerous journals, including the Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Perspective, Pacific Focus, Korean Journal of International Studies, Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, and the Yale Journal of International Affairs, as well as in five edited volumes on North Korean nuclear issues and the politics of memory and reconciliation. He is often invited to give intensive lectures on the denuclearization of North Korea and the politics of the Korean Peninsula to US federal government workers in Washington DC and Hawaii.
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Assistant Director, Peace and War Center
Megan Liptak joined Norwich University in 2010 and has planned, managed and executed events and provided various administrative services for over ten years. She has served on several campus committees, most recently as the chair of the Staff Retreat planning committee, and co-chair of the International Symposium of Military Academies planning committee. She is currently a member of the Faculty/Staff Campaign Committee and an NU Wellness Ambassador. She holds a bachelor of arts in history with a minor in anthropology/archaeology from Millersville University in Pennsylvania and a master of arts in military history from Norwich University where her capstone project focused on the comparison of combat soldier experiences during World War II and the conflict in Vietnam.
PAWC Advisory Board
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Director, Center for Civic Engagement
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Associate Professor, Royal Military College of Canada
Lt. Col. David Last, Ph.D. served for 30 years in the Canadian army, and is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada (BA, Politics and Economics), Carleton University (MA, International Affairs), and the London School of Economics (PhD, International Political Economy). He attended the US Army Command and General Staff College, Leavenworth, earning a Master of Military Arts and Science. His research interests focus on the management of violence, including peacekeeping, conflict resolution, and the use of force for international peace and security.
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Charles A. Dana Professor of Mathematics, VBRN Coordinator
Darlene Olsen, Ph.D., is a Charles A. Dana Professor of Mathematics and Norwich coordinator for the Vermont Biomedical Research Network. She is the 2013 Homer L. Dodge Award winner for Excellence in Teaching. She joined the Norwich faculty in 2006 and routinely teaches statistic courses, such as Introductory Statistics, Statistics for Health Science majors, and Statistical Methodology for STEM majors. She also teaches other general mathematics courses, including Linear Algebra and Liberal Arts Mathematics. Her current research areas are biostatistics and pedagogy in mathematics and statistics. Olsen has received research grants through the Vermont Genetics Network, served as a statistical consultant, and published work in several research journals.
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Associate Professor, English
Kyle Pivetti, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English, with research interests in Shakespeare, memory, and adaptation. His first book is titled Of Memory and Literary Form: The Making of Nationhood in Early Modern England (University of Delaware Press, 2015), which examines how something as simple as a set of rhyming lines can give readers a sense of national identity. He is also the co-author, alongside John S. Garrison, of Shakespeare at Peace (Routledge, 2018). This study of Shakespeare’s pacifism bridges the field of Peace Studies with literary analysis; it also includes a look at Shakespeare’s place in the most pacifist of television shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation. These interests in the geekier sides of Shakespeare studies appear also in a recent contribution on the fantasy writings of Terry Pratchett to the volume, Shakespeare and Geek Culture (Arden, 2020). His research has also been featured in the journals Shakespeare; Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism; Modern Philology; and Explorations in Renaissance Culture. His teaching includes courses in Shakespeare and popular culture, Literature of the Sea, Literature of Leadership, and anything that includes a good monster. Currently, he is working on a new book project that examines the intersections of memory and collective shame in Shakespeare’s works, as well as a collection of Renaissance writings on pacifist thinking.
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Professor and Chair, Department of History & Political Science
Steven E. Sodergren, Ph.D., has taught in the History and Political Science department at Norwich University and was promoted to Associate Professor of History in 2013. He presently serves as chair of the History and Political Science Department. As the resident Civil War scholar at Norwich, he routinely teaches courses on that subject in addition to a variety of courses on American and military history. Each summer he leads a group of Norwich students on staff rides to a range of Civil War battlefields, including Gettysburg, Antietam, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg. Sodergren recently completed his first book, The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns: Union Soldiers and Trench Warfare, 1864-65, which was published by Louisiana State University Press in June 2017. For The Army of the Potomac, Sodergren won the 2018 Colby Award, the first author associated with Norwich University to win the prize in its 19-year history.
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Professor, Spanish
Judith Stallings-Ward received her Ph.D. from Yale University, an Master of Arts from Middlebury College and a Bachelor of Arts from The University of Texas, Austin. She specializes in 20th century Spanish poetry as well as Cervantes. She has published extensively on the Vermont poems of Federico García Lorca, the inter-art relations in the poetry of Gerardo Diego, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and the anarchism of Gandhi and Durruti. Her most recent publication is Gerardo Diego’s Creation Myth of Music: Fábula de XYZ. Routledge, 2020. Her current book project deals with the spiritual journey of Federico García Lorca in the Americas. Besides surveys of Spanish and Spanish-American literature, and a senior seminar on Don Quixote, she teaches several interdisciplinary courses, including El narco, La guerrilla, Cultural Representations of the Spanish Civil War and Imaging Global Migration. She also serves on the advisory board of the Norwich University John and Mary Frances Patton Peace and War Center.
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Professor and Program Director, MA Diplomacy & International Relations Programs
Dr. Lasha Tchantouridze is Professor and Director of the graduate programs in Diplomacy and International Relations. He is also a Davis Center Associate, Harvard University, Boston, MA; Research Fellow, the Center for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; and Advisory Board Member of Peace & War Center at Norwich University. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Tchantouridzé’s research interests are at the intersection of diplomacy and force in international politics, and his academic publications are in the areas of geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, Canadian foreign policy, the Arctic, the Black Sea basin, international politics in the Caucasus, and NATO-Russia relations.
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Associate Professor, Psychology
Matthew A. Thomas received his B.A. and Ph.D. in cognitive/experimental psychology from the University at Albany, SUNY. He has published research investigating false memories, long-term memory, word processing (semantic priming), capture of visuospatial attention, and the influence of video games on cognition. His laboratory at Norwich is currently exploring the influence of video game play on visual attention and working memory as well as how the disruption of object templates stored in long-term memory automatically capture attention. When not in the lab, Prof. Thomas teaches courses in experimental psychology, perception, cognition, behavioral statistics, and works with students conducting their own original research projects.
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Associate Professor and Program Director, MA History and Military History Programs
David J. Ulbrich was named program director and associate professor in Norwich University’s Master of Arts in History and in Military History programs in August 2017. He previously served as an adjunct instructor, course developer, and capstone advisor for Norwich from 2007 until 2017, before he joined Norwich in his current capacity. Ulbrich taught more than 250 students and advised 50 capstone projects. Ulbrich also taught at Ball State University, Ohio University, and Rogers State University. He earned his doctorate in history in 2007 from Temple University where he studied with Gregory Urwin, Richard Immerman, and the late Russell Weigley.
Senior Research Fellows
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Adjunct Faculty, Criminal Justice
Lisa L. Chalidze, Esq. has long dedicated her work as a lawyer, educator, author, and activist to development of the rule of law, as well as the defense of human rights. Her primary research interests involve strategies for societies in transition from dictatorship to democracy. In this regard, Professor Chalidze serves as a consultant to the National Parliamentary Library in the Republic of Georgia on development of rule of law and defense of human rights, as the country struggles to overcome its Soviet past. In addition, she is an annual visitor to South Africa, where she volunteers for an NGO (of which she is also a member of the Board of Trustees) helping that country overcome the legacy of apartheid.
Lyle Goldstein, Ph.D.
Lyle Goldstein is Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. Formerly, he served as Research Professor at U.S. Naval War College for 20 years. In that post, he was awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for founding and leading the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). His main areas of expertise include both maritime security and nuclear security issues. Major focus areas have also recently included the Arctic, as well as the Korean Peninsula. He has published seven books on Chinese strategy, including Meeting China Halfway (Georgetown UP, 2015). He speaks both Chinese and Russian and is currently writing a book on China-Russia relations. He has a PhD from Princeton, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a BA from Harvard.
Faculty Fellows
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Associate Professor, History
Coordinator, Studies in War and Peace Program
PAWC Advisory Board Member
Miri Kim, Ph.D., completed her B.A. in history at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and her doctorate in history at the University of California, Irvine. Her research in military and institutional history focuses on Northeast China in the Republican Period. At Norwich, she teaches wide-ranging introductory courses in world history and East Asian history, history courses on modern China and Japan, and specialized courses, such as War and Image in Modern China. She is a member of the Association for Asian Studies, the World History Association, and the Chinese Military History Society.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Co-editor, Voices on Peace and War
Daniel A. Morris, Ph.D., holds a BA from Davidson College, an MA from Yale University, and a PhD from the University of Iowa, and has been teaching in higher education for eight years. Morris’s training and research explore religion, ethics, and American democracy. His first book, Virtue and Irony in American Democracy: Revisiting Dewey and Niebuhr (Lexington Books, 2015), asked about the qualities of character that are required for democracy to flourish. His current research studies the rhetoric of force in American quests for racial justice in conversation with the Christian just war tradition. Morris has published several articles and book chapters in a variety of peer-reviewed publications, and has presented scholarship at both national and regional conferences in relevant disciplines.
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