Simmons College

Ausra Park received her Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of South Carolina, MA in European Studies from the College of Europe, and BA in Business Administration and Management from Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). She is a recipient of the German Marshall Fund of the United States Dissertation Research Fellowship, American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS) Advanced Research Fellowship, and other research grants.

Dr. Park's primary research focuses on political leadership profiling, states' foreign policymaking processes, and top leaders' influences on key domestic institutions. Her  research interests are centered on Eastern European politics, democratization processes in the post-communist world, political psychology, and comparative foreign policies (including United States). She has published articles in European Security, Eastern European Quarterly, Journal of Baltic Studies, and Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. She has lived, conducted research, and traveled throughout Central, Eastern, and Western Europe and Eurasia.

Professor Park teaches International Relations courses, including Introduction to International Politics, Comparative Foreign Policy, International Human Rights, US Foreign Policy, Post-Communist Transitions, and Politics in the former Soviet states.

Dr. Park is also associated with the Honors program, teaching two courses: HON 301 Explosive Mix: When Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism Collide (on a role of ethnicity, religion and nationalism in genocides in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Chechnya) and HON 310 Political Psychology of Influential Women Leaders (political psychological profiling of Catherine the Great, Benazir Bhutto, Eva Peron, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleezza Rice)