Professor Nicole Detraz specializes in international relations, and environmental politics. Her research centers on the intersections of security, the environment, and gender.  This work investigates how these important topics have been linked by scholars, policymakers, and the media, as well as the implications of treating them as intertwined issues. Her dissertation examined the role of gender in discourses that combine security and the environment both in theory, through a review of scholarly literature, and in practice, through three case studies of water politics in South Asia. The project employed a variety of qualitative research methods, including discourse analysis, gender analysis, and case studies to examine the role of gender in recent debates about the connections between security and the environment.

Dr. Detraz has also conducted research on climate change as a security issue, exploring the implications of linking a wide-ranging environmental issue to security debates. Her work has recently appeared in two edited volumes in addition to Global Environmental Politics, Security Studies, and International Studies Perspectives. She has a co-authored article forthcoming in the International Feminist Journal of Politics.  Also, her book International Security and Gender was recently published by Polity Press.

Professor Detraz teaches courses on scope and methods of Political Science, theories of international relations, international conflict and security, and global environmental politics. She joined the Department of Political Science in the fall of 2009.