David Western is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Peace Studies at Grinnell College for 2008-2010.

• PhD in Political Science, Brown University, 2008
• M.A. in Political Science, Brown University, 2005
• B.A. in Political Science, University of Victoria (Canada), 2002

• POL 295.05: Peace and How to Achieve It
• POL 101.05: Introduction to Political Science

• Peace Studies (from Gandhi to Galtung to Peace-through-Global-Liberal-Governance)
• Political Theory (from classic theory such as Hobbes and Locke to contemporary theory such as Rawls and Habermas to critical theory such as Foucault and Wendy Brown)
• International Relations (IR theory, security, human rights, feminist IR)
• Ethics of Care and Empathy

• The focus of Dr. Western's graduate and current research has been the concept of empathy and its role in political life, focusing particularly on issues of violence, peace and peacemaking. With his work he hopes to remedy a traditional neglect of the concept by political thinkers and scientists, convincing political thinkers and practitioners alike that the concept should be seen as an important one for both descriptive and normative understandings of political and international life.

• Dr. Western recently completed his PhD dissertation entitled Power, Justice, Empathy: How and Why Empathy Matters for Peace, and is currently working on drawing publications from that work. In Power, Justice, Empathy, Western suggests that, in the modern era at least, the main approaches to peace have revolved around assumptions that peace is best achieved through the management of power and/or the institutional establishment of justice. (Since writing his dissertation Western has added another primary theme: utility.) Western is interested, however, in developing a better understanding of what a Peace-through-Empathy approach looks like and why political efforts at peacemaking may be improved if thinkers and practitioners gave empathy-oriented approaches more attention and resources. In his dissertation Western considered the role of power, justice and empathy in the specific case of the Northern Ireland peace process.

• Beyond the Mellon postdoctoral award, Dr. Western has also been the recipient of the Walter D. Young Scholarship at the University of Victoria, a Brown University Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship with which he conducted research in Northern Ireland in 2007, and the first ever P. Terrence Hopmann Award for Teaching Excellence from the Brown University Political Science Department.
• Beyond scholarly activities, Dr. Western has lived his life as a massive fan of rock music (once dedicating four years to playing in rock bands), has recently become a soccer convert, and is happily newlywed.