Patrice McMahon is a Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is also the Director of the University Honors Program at UNL and Dean’s Professor of Teaching and Learning. McMahon received her PhD from Columbia University in New York; her MA from The George Washington University and her BA from The American University both in Washington, DC.

McMahon has received several teaching awards, including the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education (2012); the Outstanding Educator of the Year Award (2009-10); the “best class at UNL,” (2007); and the Arts and Science College Distinguished Teaching Award (2005).

Her research focuses on humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding, nongovernmental organizations, and U.S. foreign policy. She is the author most recently of The NGO Game: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in the Balkans and Beyond (Cornell University Press, 2017) and is the co-author (with David Forsythe) of American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: U.S. Foreign Policy, Human Rights and World Order (Routledge: 2017).

She is also the author of Taming Ethnic Hatreds: Ethnic Cooperation and Transnational Networks in Eastern Europe (2007) and has been involved in four other book projects, including State Responses to Human Security: At home and Abroad (2014) and State building and the International Community: Getting its Act Together? (2012). Her research has appeared in various publications, including Foreign Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly, Democratization, and Ethnopolitics and has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS), the U.S. Department of State, the National Research Council, the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research (NCEER), the Soros Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

She is currently working on three projects. Her book project, Backlash looks at the challenges of global civil society. “Activists, Academics and Altruists” examines the growth of private organizations addressing water crises, and “The End of an Era: U.S. Foreign Policy, Rising Powers and the Future of the Liberal World Order” examines discourse and policies in China, India and Russia during the Trump administration.

At the university, she has received several teaching awards, including the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education (2012); the Outstanding Educator of the Year Award (2009-10);  the “best class at UNL,” (2007); and the Arts and Science College Distinguished Teaching Award (2005).

A former New Yorker, McMahon is proud to call Nebraska home.