GPIS Doctoral Candidate to Present Dissertation June 5

Matthew Hall, a doctoral candidate in the College of Arts and Letters' Graduate Program in International Studies (GPIS), will defend his doctoral thesis in an open forum at 2 p.m. June 5 in Batten Arts and Letters building room 7009. It is open to the public.

Hall, whose areas of concentration are comparative and regional studies and international political economy and development, will address the disconnect between commonly held beliefs about corruption reform and the lack of recent successfully implemented programs in his dissertation, "The Corruption Enigma: Examining Recent Corruption Reform in Highly Corrupt Countries."

His research consists of a qualitative comparison of three paired cases - Tanzania and Malawi, Colombia and Peru, and Thailand and the Philippines - designed to determine the primary factors in relative success.

Hall's thesis is that success is a function of the idiosyncratic particulars of each country rather than predetermined agreed-upon institutional reforms. Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, associate professor of political science, is his faculty adviser.

For more information about the GPIS program, visit http://al.odu.edu/gpis/.