Affiliates and Staff

 

Affiliates

 

 Randy Borum is a professor and program coordinator for Strategy & Intelligence Studies in the School of Information at USF, where he has also served on the faculties of the College of Public Health and College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. He served by appointment on the DNI's Intelligence Science Board (ISB) and on Defense Science Board Task Force on Understanding Human Dynamics. He taught courses on Terrorism, Custodial Interrogation, Intelligence Analysis, and Criminal Psychology and is author/ co-author of more than 150 professional publications. In addition to having served as a sworn police officer for municipal departments in Maryland and Florida, he has been an instructor since 1999 with the BJA State & Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program.

Dr. Borum is a fellowship-trained Forensic Psychologist who has been Board Certified. He worked as a Senior Consultant to the U.S. Secret Service for more than a decade helping to develop, refine and study behavior-based protocols for threat assessment and protective intelligence. He has taught at the FBI Academy, FLETC; JFK Special Warfare Center and School (Ft. Bragg); Joint Special Operations University; CIA; and the US Army Intelligence Center and School (Ft. Huachuca). He serves as an advisor to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit-1 (Threat Assessment & National Security) and FLETC Behavioral Science Division, and is listed on the United Nations' Roster of Experts in Terrorism.

Dr. Borum served as the Principal Investigator on the Psychology of Terrorism initiative, and is Past-President of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. He currently serves as Senior Editor of the Journal of Strategic Security.

 

 Michael Decker is Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History and Orthodox Religion and Associate Professor of History at USF. He joined the History Department in 2004 after completing an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Rice University. He earned a BA from Penn State University and an MST and DPhil from Oxford University in Modern History. During his time at Rice, Dr. Decker worked with Professor David Cook, with whom he studied Arabic and from whom he developed an appreciation for Islamic history and the study of radical Islam. At USF, Dr. Decker has taught and researched extensively on issues of violence, accommodation, diplomacy, and cross-cultural encounters. His most recent book is The Byzantine Art of War (Westholme, 2013).

 

 Peter N. Funke is Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Peter received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and his Vordiplom from the Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on transnational social movements, new media, and movement politics under globalizing capitalism. 

 

 Darryl Slider earned his PhD in Political Science at Yale, and began his career as a specialist on Soviet domestic politics. He wrote widely on local government, elections, ethnic relations, and reform efforts both before and after Gorbachev's emergence as Soviet leader. Since the collapse of the USSR, Dr. Slider has published extensively on the politics of Russia and Georgia. He is widely recognized as one of the leading authorities on Russian regional politics, federalism, and the rise of "Putinism." In the 2004-2005 academic year Dr. Slider was a Fulbright scholar in Russia and taught at the Higher School of Economics. Currently, his research is focused on corruption and governance in Russia.

Arman Mahmoudian is a Research Associate at the Center for Strategic and Diplomatic Studies and also Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and International Affairs at the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies of the University of South Florida. He earned his bachelor degree in Law from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran. He earned his Master's degree in International Relations and Global Security from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (Moscow). He writes for Iranian  newspapers like "Shargh" and "Etemad" , "Kurdpress", "Iran Diplomacy", "Hemayat" and others.