SFU Political Science Welcomes New Course Instructor Dr. Elis Vllasi

Dr. Elis Vllasi from Purdue University will join the Department of Political Science as a new course instructor for the spring semester. This experienced and award-winning university instructor has taught numerous international relations courses.

Vllasi bridges social sciences and STEM to study Russian influence operations in Europe. As a Fulbright Fellow, he conducted a pilot study examining Russia’s influence in Kosovo. Using elite interviews with NATO senior command, government officials, and civil society organizations, he analyzed Russian objectives in Kosovo, the actors, and the pathways in which Russia exercises its influence and counteracts NATO policy in the Region.

In spring 2021, Vllasi will teach two undergraduate courses, Pol 141, War, International Cooperation and Development and Pol 349, Selected Topics in International Relations. He will also teach the graduate course, POL 846, International Security.

Featured Course, POL 846: You were born, assuming you are a child of the 1990s, in a unipolar world where the U.S. was the world’s only superpower and the Western values of political rights, civil liberties, and capitalism reigned supreme. The major international security issues were largely civil wars, State failure, and multilateral peacekeeping.

As you embark on graduate studies, you find yourself in a rapidly changing world. A rising China and a revisionist Russia have brought about a more multipolar world, and political and economic liberalism are increasingly shunned abroad and in the West. The threats have multiplied, are less apparent and the solutions seem inadequate.

This course is devoted to enduring and contemporary questions in international security, a field that at its core is about the threat and use of force by states. The first part of the course focuses on the major theoretical traditions in IR and international security. In the second part of the course, the focus shifts to important substantive questions in security studies, such as security institutions, Russian and Chinese influence operations, military coercion and effectiveness, and disruptive technologies (social media, AI), amongst other topics.