V. Spike Peterson

Emeritus Professor
V. Spike Peterson

Social Sciences 139A

V. Spike Peterson is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations in the School of Government and Public Policy, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Institute for LGBT Studies, and Center for Latin American Studies.  She was recently awarded a Richard Hodder-Williams Fellowship by the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, where she resided for several months in Spring 2018. She was also honored to receive the 2018 LGBTQA Scholar Award by the LGBTQA Caucus of the International Studies Association, which recognizes her long-standing and pioneering research in queer approaches to IR and IPE. In 2016 she received the Charles A. McCoy Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Political Science Association. Peterson was earlier awarded a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship and was hosted by the Critical Global Politics unit at the University of Manchester, UK during the Fall 2016 term. During the spring of 2014 she was a Senior Research Fellow hosted by the Department of Geography at Durham University, England, and during 2008-2011 was an Associate Research Fellow of the London School of Economics. Her book publications include Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium (2010) and two earlier editions of Global Gender Issues (1999, 1993) with Anne Sisson Runyan; her own  A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies (2003); and Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (1992), which she contributed to and edited. She has published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, most recently on informalizations of work in relation to structural inequalities and their corollary insecurities worldwide; global householding; gendering war and its economies; and critical queering of marriage, citizenship, migration and states/nations.

Peterson has been awarded a Rockefeller Bellagio Scholarly Residency (2008), a Udall Center Public Policy Fellowship (2007), a Fulbright Scholarship for research in the Czech Republic (1997, declined)  and a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grant (1996). In addition to her residence at the University of Manchester (2016), Peterson has enjoyed Visiting Research Scholar or Professorships at Durham University (2014), the London School of Economics (2007, 2008), University of Göteborg (2000), University of Bristol (1998) and the Australian National University (1995). She has guest lectured at numerous universities in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe and been an invited speaker at international conferences in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Peterson currently serves on the editorial boards of International Feminist Journal of Politics; Globalizations; Journal of Women, Politics and Policy; New Political Science; Politics & Gender; and Perspectives: The Review of International Affairs.  She received the SBS Dean's Award for Excellence in Upper Division Teaching (2014), the Magellan Circle Award for Teaching Excellence (2008) and the Provost’s General Education Teaching Award (2001) at the University of Arizona, as well as the national Mentor Award of the Society for Women in International Political Economy (2000). She regularly teaches undergraduate courses in Politics and Theory that are cross-listed with Gender and Women’s Studies, and graduate seminars on contemporary social theory and global political economy.