About

Research Interests

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: US Foreign Policy; International Organizations; United Nations; U.S. Congress and International Organizations; Interdisciplinary Arctic issues.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: Politics of International Finance; International Monetary Fund; World Bank; Politics of stock markets; Congress and banking policy.

Current Projects

Dr. Lavelle’s research explores global governance in two related areas: multilateralism and U.S. foreign policy.  Her work on international organizations specifically concerns the role of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank in coordinating financial relations across developed and developing countries. Her expertise on American foreign relations stems from her real-world work experiences in the U.S. State Department and on Capitol Hill.  Therefore, she is particularly interested in the relationship between domestic and international politics that have helped and hindered the policy process over time.  Her newest project integrates a variety of economic, security, and environmental issues that have come together as the U.S. engages the Arctic region in the twenty-first century.

Publications

Dr. Lavelle’s book on the history of American foreign relations in the Arctic region, Reluctant Conquest:  American Wealth, Power, and Security in the Arctic, is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2025.  Her other recent book, The Challenges of Multilateralism, was released in March 2020 by Yale University Press. Three recent articles look at Arctic policy, available on the Arctic Council and the Polar Code here, China and the Arctic here and Russia and the Arctic Council here.

She has written three books on the political economy of finance.  The most recent—that explores American governing institutions that formulate financial policy—is titled Money and Banks in the American Political System.  It was released by Cambridge University Press in 2013. She derived the analytical framework for this and her book on Congress and the IMF and World Bank, Legislating International Organization: The US Congress, the IMF, and the World Bank (Oxford University Press, 2011), from her experience working as a Congressional fellow on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services for Chairman Barney Frank.  Her first book, The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets (Oxford University Press, 2004), analyzed the historical and political processes that led to the ownership structures of large firms in middle and low-income countries.

In addition, she has published articles, book reviews, and chapters appearing in Asian Security, Environment and Security, Problems of Post Communism, The Journal of Policy History, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, International Organization, Review of International Organizations, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Third World Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, International Journal of Political Economy, International Studies Review, Journal of International Affairs, Business and Politics, and The Columbia Journal of World Business.

Awards

Dr. Lavelle has held fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, American Political Science Association, Danish Maritime Fund, National Science Foundation, Hagley Museum and Library, and West Africa Research Association. In the spring semester of 2010, she was the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Global Affairs at the Munk Centre, University of Toronto. She is a permanent member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.

Activities in International Studies

Dr. Lavelle is currently a global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in its Global Europe program. She is on the National Program Committee of the New York Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.  

She is a former member of the editorial review board of the UNCTAD journal Transnational Corporations, and was a member of the Fulbright US Student Program’s National Screening Committee for three years.  She and Timothy J. Sinclair (formerly of the University of Warwick), founded a book series Finance Matters for Agenda Publishing in the UK.  The series provides advanced introductions to the processes, relationships and institutions that make up the global financial system.

She has also served as an at-large member of the board of the International Organization Section of the International Studies Association and as a past section President of the International Political Economy Section of the International Studies Association.  She chaired the editorial review committee of the American Political Science Association’s journal PS:  Political Science and Politics, and served on its editorial board.  She was an associate editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies.

 

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