First Post -- My Bio

I thought an introduction and bio would be in order. I am starting this blog so I can post on top topics that don't appear on a blog that I already contribute to. My interests are broader than that so hence this occasional blog. I care about the future of U.S. foreign policy and our role in the world. I am particularly interested in how we deal with new global issues like climate change and HIV/AIDS. So, this blog will address those and other topics. I hope you enjoy it.

I teach at the University of Texas at the LBJ School of Public Affairs so here is the obligatory biographical sketch that appears on the school's webpage.

Joshua Busby, who joined the LBJ School faculty in fall 2006 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, was previously a Fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance in the Woodrow Wilson School. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled States of Grace: Moral Movements and Foreign Policy. Busby was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the International Security Program. In 2003-2004, he served as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Foreign Policy Studies program. He defended his dissertation with distinction in summer 2004 from Georgetown University, where he also earned his M.A. in 2002.

In his book project, Busby seeks to explain why some countries are willing to take on new international commitments championed by principled advocacy groups and others are not. Substantively, he explores the politics of climate change, developing country debt relief, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court in selected country cases in the advanced industrialized world. He has also written extensively on transatlantic relations, both in international security and the climate change arena. In 2004, Busby and co-author Heiko Borchert won the Foreign Policy Association's Transatlantic Essay Competition. His research interests also include U.S. grand strategy, energy security, and the foreign policy of advanced industrialized countries.

Busby is a Term Member in the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His works have appeared in Current History and Problems of Post-Communism, among other publications.

Busby also has a regional interest in Latin America, having served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador (1997–1999), worked in Nicaragua (Summer 1994, Spring 1996), and consulted for the Inter-American Development Bank (2000). Prior to working with the Peace Corps, he was a Marshall Scholar at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England), where he completed a second B.A. (with Honors) in Development Studies (1993–1995). He completed his first B.A. (with Highest Distinction) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science and Biology.