Maria Bohorquez, chair and professor of chemistry, started her two-year term as president of the Iowa Network for Women in Higher Education.

Mahmoud Hamad, associate professor of political science, had a truly international summer. During May 17-21, Mahmoud traveled to Cairo, Egypt, to work on organizing the fourth annual conference of the Arab Constitutional Law Association—he chairs its scientific committee. Mahmoud also attended the Brandeis University’s Summer Institute of Israel Studies with a select group of U.S. and foreign faculty. Mahmoud was then invited to attend the 2015 Central European University’s Summer University program on Constitution-building in Africa in Budapest, Hungary. Finally, Mahmoud traveled to Tunisia to work with the Libyan Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA) in finalizing the first democratic constitution for Libya. The CDA is expected to approve the final draft of the constitution in late October, before being put to a referendum later in 2015.

Debra DeLaet, professor of politics and international relations and department chair, is presenting a paper at a conference on Transnational and Transborder Familial and Gender Relations: Comparing the Influence of Blurred and Brittle Borders at the University of Oxford. Her paper is titled, “Female Genital Cutting and the Family as a Site of Cultural Contestation and Change in Transnational Migration Contexts.”