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Academics

Carrie Booth Walling, Associate Professor

Carrie Booth Walling is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Prentiss M. Brown Honors Program. Walling teaches courses in international politics and human rights. Walling holds a Ph.D. in Political Science with a minor in Human Rights from the University of Minnesota (2008). She also holds a BA in International Relations from James Madison College, Michigan State University and Masters degrees in Strategic Studies and Political Science from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and University of Minnesota, respectively.

Research & Scholarship

Walling studies how power, interests and norms shape international decision-making in the UN Security Council and international courts and tribunals. Her recent article, "The United Nations Security Council and Human Rights," was published in a special edition of Global Governance, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. Walling's research is situated at the intersection of human rights, human security, and international law. Walling's central focus is international responses to mass atrocity crimes including military humanitarian intervention, transitional justice, human rights trials and how human rights norms are changing the meaning of international security and state sovereignty. Walling studies how power, interests and norms shape international decision-making in the UN Security Council and international courts and tribunals. Walling is author of All Necessary Measures: The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention, Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press 2013). To learn more about her book and how the stories we tell each other about violence and civil war affect UN Security Council decision-making, listen to this podcast from the genocide prevention series as part of the New Book Network.

A second branch of Walling's research emphasizes applied scholarship focused broadly on human rights practice. Walling studies the development of human rights policy, the local implementation of global norms and the reverse - how local practices shape global norms. Walling is working on her second book, Human Rights and Dignity for All: Exploring Rights Claims in America and Around the World. The book shows how ordinary people use human rights claims to challenge harmful and exclusionary practices of powerful governments and institutions. Covering rights and justice issues from the Flint Water Crisis and mass incarceration in the U.S. to the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China and the ISIS genocide against Yazidi women, Walling explains the causes of violations and the advocacy practices that lead to human rights change.

Walling's research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, Global Governance, Human Rights Quarterly, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Human Rights and International Journal of Human Rights, among others. Walling is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project. She was awarded the Albion College Associate Professor Summer Fellowship in 2019, was a Visiting Research Scholar with the International Policy Center at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in 2017, awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Scholar of the Year Award in 2015 and the New Development Fellowship in 2014 for her scholarship.

Teaching & Student Engagement

Walling is passionate about teaching political science and human rights. She was awarded the Student's Choice Teaching Award by the Albion College Student Senate for excellence in teaching and advising in 2014. Working collaboratively with Susan Waltz (University of Michigan), Walling has launched a website on human rights advocacy and the history of international human rights standards - which they describe as is a free, online text book. Walling is deeply committed to hands-on, problem-based, experiential learning. At Albion College, she is active with the Holocaust Studies Service Learning Project, regularly runs simulations and role-play games in her classroom, and teaches with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program - a transformative educational program that brings together Albion College students with incarcerated men for a semester-long course on justice taught behind the prison walls. Walling regularly involves Albion students in her research.

Learn more about Walling's teaching on human rights in this feature article, "A Matter of Conscience".

Walling teaches the following courses at Albion College:

  • PLSC 103: Introduction to International Politics
  • PLSC 207: Transitional Justice
  • PLSC 256: Human Rights
  • PLSC 301: International Organizations
  • PLSC 357: International Law and Politics
  • PLSC 372: Gender, Sex and International Politics
  • PLSC 404: Causes of War
  • HSP 155: The Politics of Genocide

Academic Publications

  • "Responses to Genocide," in Deborah Mayerson (ed.), A Cultural History of Genocide (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming).
  • "The United Nations Security Council and Human Rights," Global Governance, 26:2 (2020).
  • "Methods Focus: Insights on Victim Testimony and Transitional Justice," Journal of Human Rights, 17:3 (2018), 384-391.
  • "Syria and the Responsibility to Prosecute: Norm Promotion in the UN Security Council," in Kurt Mills and Melissa Labonte, Accessing Human Rights and Justice (Routledge Press, 2018).
  • "Contentious Politics in the United States: What Role for Political Scientists?" PS: Political Science & Politics, 50:4 (2017), 985-989, co-authored with Maryam Zarneger Deloffre.
  • "Human Rights Norms, State Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention," Human Rights Quarterly, 37 (2015), 383-413.
  • "The UN Security Council and the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights," in Joel Pruce ed. The Social Practice of Human Rights (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015), 143-165.
  • "Putting the Pieces Together: Human Rights Advocacy and the History of International Human Rights Standards," (with Susan Waltz) Human Rights Quarterly, 36 (2014), 909-915.
  • All Necessary Measures: The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
  • "Decision-makers in the Dock: How International Law, Trials and Human Rights Activism are Shaping the Justice Norm," New Global Studies, December 2012
  • "The Impact of Human Rights Trials in Latin America," Journal of Peace Research, 44:4 (July 2007), 427-445, co-authored with Kathryn Sikkink.
  • "Global Trends in Transitional Justice and Transitional Justice in Argentina," in Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena (eds.) Transitional Justice in the 21st Century: Beyond Truth and Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2006), co-authored with Kathryn Sikkink.
  • "Ethnic Cleansing" in Ken Booth (ed.) The Kosovo Tragedy: Human Rights Dimensions (Frank Cass Publishers, 2001), 47-66.
  • "The History and Politics of Ethnic Cleansing," International Journal of Human Rights, 4:3/4 (Autumn/Winter 2000).
  • "Intervention, Emancipation and Kosovo," Civil Wars, 2:3 (Autumn 1999), 65-88.

Opinion Editorials

Prior to joining the faculty at Albion in 2011, Walling was a postdoctoral fellow with the Michigan Society of Fellows at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan (2008-2011). Walling's previous professional experience includes program and development work for Women for Women International - a non-governmental organization serving women affected by war and conflict.