UMass Boston

Food security, economic and social rights, ethics, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations

PhD, The George Washington University, 2014

MA, California State University, Los Angeles, 2008

BA, California State University, Fresno (Smittcamp Family Honors College), 2005

Fall 2022 Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:00PM-4:00PM, and by appointment

Dr. Michelle Jurkovich is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UMass Boston.  She is the author of Feeding the Hungry: Advocacy and Blame in the Global Fight Against Hunger (Cornell University Press, 2020).   She is working on two new book projects, Aspiration in World Politics (co-authored with Martha Finnemore and under advance contract with Cornell University Press) and Good Enough for Them? Ethics and Politics in the Construction of the Food Ration, the research for which has been supported by a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress in 2021. Her work has been published in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, and Global Governance, among other outlets. Previously, she served as a Science and Technology fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where she worked at the Office of Food for Peace at USAID (2017-2018). During 2020, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Her research interests include food security and hunger, economic and social rights, human security, and ethics.

In Spring 2022, Dr. Jurkovich was awarded the Pedagogical Innovation Award from the College of Liberal Arts at UMass Boston.  She has served as a Faculty Senator for the College of Liberal Arts since Fall 2019.  She is currently the faculty advisor for Model United Nations.    

For more information on Dr. Jurkovich’s ongoing research projects or a copy of her CV, please visit her website.