SCHOLARSHIP
My scholarship during the period under review has mainly focused on international migration and social justice issues in the context of sexuality, race, and gender as well as the methodology and practice of dialogue. Below you will find summaries and materials for the three areas in which I have focused my scholarly activity, including scholarship of discovery, scholarship of integration, scholarship of application, and scholarship of teaching.
Scholarship Reflection
My scholarship since I entered graduate school 25 years ago has always centered on three areas that I connect in my work: international migration, international political economy, and social justice. During my time at SUNY Potsdam, my interdisciplinary work has included dialogue as an approach to constructive cross-cultural and intergroup engagement and migration as adaptation to the environmental in general and climate change in particular. My teaching and service at SUNY Potsdam has often taken up much of my time, but I have been able to advance my scholarship in all areas during the time period under review. Due the the teaching load when I was a lecturer/adjunct and worked at 2-3 universities each semester, I was not able to conduct much research between 2011 and 2017. Since I have been on this tenure-track line, I have been able to restart my scholarship in all areas, for which I am very thankful. Since then I have been able to write multiple academic papers and completed projects that I was able to present at various conferences. I have a forthcoming paper publication and plan to submit another paper for publication later in 2023. While I see teaching at the center of my mission at SUNY Potsdam, being able to maintain a challenging and enjoyable research agenda makes this work significantly more enjoyable.
While COVID challenged progress in my previous gender and IPE research, I was able to expand into a new area in my scholarship of discovery and integration in environmental migration and have recently presented a research paper at the annual conference of the Northeastern Political Science Association 2021 based on research I am conducting with Dr. Jess Rogers (Environmental Studies) on international migration as a climate change adaptation strategy. We saw some encouraging patterns in our three case studies for this paper which all allowed us to get a follow-up paper at the Association of the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University in May 2022 in which we were able to show the broader applicability of our findings. In this paper (with Dr. Humagain - Earth and Environmental Science) we were able to show that climate change migration could best be explained with the frequency with which environmental shocks impact a population.
We hope to deepen our understanding of our findings, as they could be significant in climate change adaptation planning and may find some recognition in the literature. Our research was cutting-edge enough for a group of researchers (mainly from NYU) to reach out to us and invite us to join their large multi-year NSF grant application, asking me to become one of the 5 PIs for the grant. I am very excited about this interdisciplinary project as it perfectly combines my expertise in migration with Dr. Rogers expertise in climate change. I find it to be ideal when scholarship directly informs teaching and therefore we are offering the college’s first WAYS 301 course, which is interdisciplinary and team-taught.
Another aspect of both my scholarship of discovery and integration that I am extraordinarily excited about is my research project with Dr. Welch (History). Since I have been approved for a sabbatical, I am finally able to conduct all necessary interviews for this research on the impact of global trade on local gender norms in the Balkans. We are studying how the extended absence of the male family member (in this case sailors from Dubrovnik in the global maritime economy) impacts the gender roles within the familial and communal contexts. In order to continue this project, I needed the ability to spend 4-8 weeks in Dubrovnik, Croatia and surrounding areas to interview women outside of the main tourist or holiday seasons which is when our semesters here are in session. Now I am able to be in Dubrovnik either in October/November or March/April which will be ideal timing. I have started to lay the groundwork for this project and will be applying for a UUP individual development grant to help me finance the trip. I have kept up on the literature on the topic and it seems to be an area of emerging interest with a few more recent publications with case studies in Pakistan and Indonesia.
Besides the environmental migration project, I have been able to make the most progress in my scholarship of application and discovery in the areas of dialogue across difference both in the domestic and international context. The anti-racism dialogue sessions and the first pilot rounds of the First Year Connect (1YC) program provided us with some initial interesting data on the effects of these dialogues on participants. For an overview of the data, please see Service and scroll to the 1YC program. We have not started with the writing process as the fate of the program is currently in limbo. If 1YC continues we are interested in waiting with the first publication until we have conducted the program at least twice (ideally 4 times) to show the impact of the program better. Once a decision is made in the coming months, I will readdress this work with my potential co-authors. In addition, I have started work with a couple of colleagues on a less data-driven project focused on a critical investigation of the neutrality premise of dialogue facilitation in a white supremacist and heteronormative society and the role empathy can play in this tension.
I am looking forward to also conducting some additional research, in part primary source research, for my new WAY 103 class on the history of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States during my sabbatical. Looking forward, I hope to complete the gender and IPE research project with a publication, but I do not have specific plans to continue this project, even though I am certainly not opposed to take next steps if an opportunity arises. I am most excited about the continuation of my dialogue and social justice work as well as my research on climate change migration. Both projects can also inform each other, which I hope to approach at a later stage of the process. Both projects have the potential for multiple publications and longer lasting and more specific research agendas.
I am highlighting letters of recommendation that primarily address my scholarship activity. For a complete list of recommendations, please check the link in the menu up top.
"Michael is extremely knowledgeable about all the nuance of human migration, particularly issues of forced migration – such as due to violence or destruction. [...] Michael took the lead on writing this detailed literature review, which was much praised during our presentation. He was able to help me make meaning from the global datasets we had gotten from the United Nations regarding migrant stocks throughout the world over time."
Dr. Jess Rogers,
Environment.Science, Co-Author
"I was consistently impressed with his wealth of knowledge related to the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, and his thoughtful consideration of intersectionality.[...] Professor Popović refused to omit the contributions of people of color and trans individuals from the history of the movement, and in the many years I have been working in this field, he is the only educator to have made that thoughtful choice."
Cailey Underhill, Coordinator for Gender and Sexuality
Environmental Migration as
Climate Change Adaptation
About 3 years ago, Dr. Jess Rogers (Environmental Studies) and I started to have first conversations about the intersection of our two fields of knowledge, international migration and environmental climate change science. The conversations slowly developed into weekly meetings during which we educated each other about the different aspects of our respected fields that the other person should know more about. Ultimately, we decided on utilizing a third discipline, Geographic Information Science, in which Dr. Rogers thankfully also holds expertise, to get a fuller understanding of international migration as adaptation to global climate change with a distinctly quantitative approach that is less common in migration studies. We merged large data sets from international organizations on international migration as well weather-related displacement events, both slow and rapids onset, such as hurricanes and droughts, and decided to initially focus on three case studies. In our initial three case studies, Fiji, Philippines, and Dominica, we were able to see a fairly strong correlation between frequency of events and following international migration. Other measures such as damages or deaths either did not appear to be significant or only applied in very specific context. We presented our initial results at the annual conference of the 53rd Northeastern Political Science Association’s conference in Fall 2021.
To further understand our initial findings, Dr. Rogers and I invited Dr. Humagain to join our team to prepare a follow up paper to the initial project for the 26th World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University. In this paper, we try to test if we can find evidence for international migration as climate change adaptation across 139 states between 1995 and 2015. In addition, we also test the assertion that international migration is one adaptation strategy for climate change that can be seen when associated weather events occur with high frequency (Saldana-Zorrilla and Sandbery, 2009; Naude 2008), affect a large number of people, cause significant amounts of physical damage and a high number of casualties while accounting for the most common additional explanations for migration such as conflict, distance, political rights and civil liberties, and economic incentives. In our analysis, we find support for both assertions. International migration, as an adaptation to climate change, is a distinct though interconnected aspect of political, economic, and security drivers of migration. International migration as a climate change adaptation is more likely chosen when the frequency with which climate change disasters occur increases while there is little or no evidence that damage or the number of people affected or dead, are primary push factors for this migration., we are attempting to use a gravity model for migration which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate change related weather events and international migration, while controlling for competing push and pull factors.
These findings are significant since the literature is only starting to answer these questions and we have established a very solid foundation for a large variety of follow-up projects. If we can show that we are indeed are very likely to be looking at adaptive climate migration in our data, we will be able to fully utilize the analytical power of Geographic Information Science through the geospatial analysis for migrant flow to test a large variety of hypothesis in the migration literature that have so far only been analyzed in small-n case studies. This will allow for connecting existing
case studies and the analysis of understudied
patterns that the geospatial data may reveal.
This would be a research agenda for the
remainder of my academic career, and I would
be excited to devote that much time to it as
I see it as a very important issue for a variety
of reasons. There are very clear policy planning
implication in our research for long-term
responses to climate change adaptations.
In addition, our research can aid in countering
efforts of further securitizing climate migrants
as our numbers certainly do not show the large
numbers that xenophobes and nationalists
predict and previous, flawed and thoroughly
debunked studies had predicted, and the press
sensationalized. We hope that this research
aids in a science- and human rights-based approach to future climate change migrants.
Our research here is so cutting edge that we were invited to join 5
researchers from mainly NYU for a large multi-year NSF grant application
that would allow me to contiue work on this project for the forseeable
future.
This policy-oriented research on climate migration has significant climate justice implications. Over the past 5 years I have expanded my research into social justice issues significantly and this work has found a direct application in a forthcoming publication with my two co-authors Dr. LaVine and Dr. Ford (both Environmental Studies) titled "Climate Justice and Global Development at the Nexus of Moral and Political Philosophy: Realizing Transformative Ethical Frameworks from the Work of Achille Mbembe and Charles Mills" in the Journal of Global Ethics.
As currently understood and practiced, global development and climate justice appear
irreconcilable. In fact, global development has been and remains a key driver of climate
inequalities. We hold that this is not an accident, but instead is a result of global development theory and practice being established within worldwide systems of oppression and white supremacy. We define global development as setting goals for and achieving what constitutes a good life for all communities, and taking the steps needed to reach those goals. In order to realize a just and sustaining alternative development future for humanity and Earth, the normative, epistemological, and historical foundations of “development,” as well as the “rules of the game” need to be uncovered, critiqued, and ultimately revolutionized. Aborting the entrenched development paradigm requires establishing a new ethical framework for the relationships of humans to each other and to the natural world. This article will provide a sketch of how the theories of two moral and political philosophers – Achille Mbembe and Charles Mills – point us in the direction of this transformational ethical framework. Additionally, we will examine two contexts that should motivate development practitioners to move from the current development regime toward the direction of a transformational ethical framework built off of the work of these philosophers. To demonstrate the usefulness of a new ethical framework we review: (i) the
perpetual failure of global development practice to foster a humane approach to migration; and, (ii) the inability of global development solutions, like leapfrogging, to stray from the very problems they are intended to address.
"This is the scholarship of integration at its finest, demonstrating Michael’s ability to work across disciplines on critical topics of human knowledge that serve the interests of the larger community by continually interrogating the significance of specific scholarship. Michael is consistently responding to the question of how the knowledge of his field of politics and international relations can be made more useful and how that knowledge can be responsibly applied. I find that such a commitment to practical interdisciplinarity can be quite difficult, and I find Michael to be a colleague who surpasses at this interdisciplinary challenge."
Dr. Claudia Ford,
Chair Environmental Studies
Gender
Gender Roles and International Political Economy
Dr. Gaylynn Welch and I have been waiting for years to get an opportunity to conduct this research because we need to be able to conduct interviews in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Now that I am receiving a sabbatical, we are ready to jump on the opportunity. In this project, we are studying how the extended absence of the male family member (in this case sailors from Dubrovnik in the global maritime economy) impacts the gender roles within the familial and communal contexts. I will be conducting interviews with women in Oct/Nov 22 or Mar/Apr 23 for about 4-8 weeks in Dubrovnik, Croatia and surrounding areas. I have kept up on the literature on the topic and it seems to be an area of emerging interest with a few more recent publications with case studies in Pakistan and Indonesia. While I see less potential for a longer-term research agenda in this direction, I am combining my academic knowledge and anecdotal understanding of gender relations in a local community that has been strongly connected and economically entirely dependent on the global maritime economy since at least the 13th century. This research relates to research on the causes for the empowerment of women in Nordic Countries (also connected to trade and fishing) and we are interested in better understanding the variation between all aforementioned cases and Croatia which may ultimately lead to a more comparative paper. The research questions I am including still require a gender inclusive revision under consideration of the prevalent gender norms in Croatia.
Critical Perspectives on Masculinity
I have also engaged in a few smaller scholarship activity connected to my DEI work on
gender and sexuality, especially as it involves dialogue as a communication and teaching
tool. As one example, I am including a presentation on race and gender that I presented
with Dr. Matt LaVine at anannual diversity, equity, and inclusion conference at SUNY’s TCCC.
This presentation was focused on an interested undergraduate audience who is relatively
new to the topic.
"Such service is so central to Professor Popovic’s being and he has excelled at it so much that he has done research on it as well. He presented at the 2019 SUNY ODEI conference on what it takes to make something like the Days of Reflection happen on campus. He also presented at a conference at TCCC in February 2020 on dialogue in relation to issues of gender and sexuality. This reveals what is perhaps Professor Popovic’s greatest strength—his ability to move from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and applied to maximize student well-being."
Dr. Matt LaVine, Environmental Studies, DEI Analyst
Dialogue
Intergroup Dialogue
"While Michael shines in all areas of scholarship and service, I find that it is in university service and the scholarship of application that Michael excels. I have direct knowledge and experience of Michael’s value to the campus and the college community around the critical and demanding issues of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Michael applies his academic competence in diplomacy, dialogue, racial justice, and gender justice to the service needs of the campus in these areas."
Dr. Claudia Ford (Chair of Environmental Studies, former interim CDO)
My last larger area of scholarship and application is surrounding dialogue. I was first exposed to dialogue in the post-confliction resolution context of the Yugoslav war in Bosnia and Croatia. I also participated in intergroup dialogues between the Croatian and Serbian diaspora in St. Louis, Missouri. As a child of an immigrant and leaving in both places, I was very much used to both the joys and challenges of cross- and intercultural dialogue. When Dr. Phil Neisser connected me with Soliya in 2013, I was thrilled to find out that my students would be able to participate in a program in which they would be able to virtually connect with students who are mainly from Europe and the MENA region. After experiencing the concrete communication skill improvements and gained cross-cultural competencies that positively influenced both my pedagogy and my classroom content, I started to research more systematically.
I have been able to thoroughly research the intergroup dialogue literature and have made significant progress in my knowledge on anti-oppression, particularly anti-racist, literature for the social justice and facilitation aspects of this work. After this more than cursory but certainly not completed survey of the literature, we have started to apply the framework of intergroup facilitated dialogue to the incoming First Years at SUNY Potsdam with the First Year Connect (1YC) program. Please see details in my Service section. We are collecting data to better understand what kind of impact these dialogues have on participants that would create a more inclusive campus community through increased empathy, better listing skills, greater understanding of intergroup differences and how to engage with them constructively, and an increase sensed of belonging for all students. I have completed two short executive summaries of our experiences during Aug 20/Jan21 and Aug 22, and I have presented a more detail set of results to various audiences on campus, including President’s Council. As the program is currently paused, we have not taken the step to publish our results. Ideally, we would like to at least observe one more round of dialogues with the
entire incoming class to allow for better comparison and maybe some initial findings. If we continue with 1YC, I will wait with work on a publication until Fall 2022. If we do not continue, I will reach out to my potential co-authors then an initiate the publication process. This approach was certainly innovative enough and we have easily good enough results to get something published.
Dialogue in Anti-Racism Work
I have also expanded my social justice research into the area or racism and anti-racism work. My work in the area over the last 6 years has resulted in my WAYS 103 Immigration in the United States in which we look at U.S. immigration history through a lens of race and xenophobia. I taught the course for the first time with great success for a first iteration during Fall 2021. I have expanded this research into the intersection with dialogue where difficult and important tension arise between the neutrality of an facilitator and appropriate anti-racist facilitation practices. While technically a focus on racial awareness through education of the facilitator paired with an empathy-focused and trauma-informed facilitation approach can allow for these conversations to occur as evidenced by the 1YC program, but a more theoretically rigorous understanding of this tension seems both necessary and potentially fruitful for future facilitation training and a publication. I am working with a couple of my facilitation coordinators on this project, but do not expect a quick completion at this point.
Through my facilitation of approximately 118 dialogue sessions in 2020 and 2021, I have gained some valuable experience, especially in the for me new area of intragroup dialogue. Among the total, I facilitated 7 intragroup anti-racism facilitated dialogue groups for 8-12 weeks each and I facilitated 1 such group on a mostly weekly basis for over 9 months. This experience has led to my desire to do some more systematic work with what we learned to further complement my knowledge and scholarship on dialogue.
COIL conference presentation &
Soliya Facilitator Training
I have also engaged in further scholarship when it comes to dialogue in two additional ways. Due to my expertise in cross-cultural communication expertise, I was invited by Soliya to speak on a panel at the 10th Annual SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Conference in NYC. I spoke on a panel discussing the underlying pedagogy of technology-enabled cross-cultural communication and the resulting possibilities for appreciation of difference and inclusion of the other. Our panel was a great success with almost 40 people in attendance and a vibrant discussion after the presentation.
Furthermore, I have used my scholarship in LGBTQ+ rights and support issues and my scholarship on dialogue to develop specific training for intergroup facilitators on LGBTQ+ issues during dialogues. These trainings were given during summer 2021 5 times with very good reviews from Soliya and the participants. I expect to be able to do more work in this area next year and hope to publish a guide.
