CISAC fellow wins political science dissertation award

%people1%, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, won the American Political Science Association's 2004 Helen Dwight Reid Award for the best doctoral dissertation in international relations, law and politics. Kinsella received the award at the association's annual meeting Sept. 2-5 in Chicago. Her dissertation, The Image Before the Weapon: A Genealogy of the "Civilian" in International Law and Politics, examines the ways in which Western societies have distinguished civilians from combatants during key periods of armed conflict from the 11th to 20th centuries. One of Kinsella's important findings, as the award committee noted, is "that the laws of war have, from their very origin, served as much to justify war--to make it morally possible, and even to claim the moral high ground for one's side--as to limit it." Kinsella concluded her dissertation with a discussion of its relevance to recent U.S. actions and rhetoric toward Iraq.