Dr. Myra Waterbury is Assistant Professor of Political Science, She did her doctoral work at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her dissertation, titled The State as Ethnic Activist: Explaining Continuity and Change in Hungarian Diaspora Policy, explores the domestic political factors behind Hungary's policies toward the 3 million ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring states. Her work shows how actors in states with significant diaspora populations seek to co-opt and control transnational networks of ethnic affiliation to further their own political goals. She also looks at the role of regime change, democratization, changing international norms, and supranational integration on state-diaspora relations. She is the author of "Internal Exclusion, External Inclusion: Diaspora Politics and Party-Building Strategies in Post-Communist Hungary," available in the August 2006 issue of East European Politics and Societies.

Dr. Waterbury also worked as a Population Affairs Officer at the United Nations and was the Grant and Office Coordinator of the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship, a research center at the New School for Social Research, from 2003-2006. Her teaching interests include the Politics of Eastern Europe, Comparative Politics, Immigration and the Politics of Difference, Diasporas and Transnational Politics, Democracy and Democratic Transitions, and Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict.