Luke Herrington Email & Phone Number

Dr. Luke M. Herrington is a political scientist who specializes in the study of international relations (IR) and comparative politics.As a broadly trained scholar with an interdisciplinary background in political science, IR, history, the humanities, and women, gender, and sexuality studies, Luke’s teaching and research interests are varied. However, his primary areas of empirical expertise concentrate on an array of country-, group-, and individual-level perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. For example, Luke’s research examines extremist ideologies and conspiratorial ideation, with an eye toward understanding the causes and consequences of terrorism and other forms of political violence. Among other things, he is also specialized in the study of religion in both international and domestic politics on the one hand, and such democratic values as political tolerance on the other.Luke’s ability to distill his wide-ranging interests into a cohesive social science research program is perhaps best epitomized by his doctoral dissertation. In Unpacking the “Religious Freedom Peace”: Religious Freedom as a Multivalent Determinant of Political Violence, he synthesizes research on terrorism, religion, and tolerance, to elucidate a complex series of relationships that exist between religious freedom and political violence. He successfully defended his dissertation with honors at the University of Kansas in 2020.Luke’s primary areas of theoretical expertise concern the rise and fall of great powers (e.g., hegemonic stability theory), the self-identity of nation-states (e.g., ontological security theory), and military FICINT, or the use of science fiction and popular culture as both a forecasting and pedagogical tool suitable for advancing scholar’s, student’s, policymaker’s, and the public’s understandings of world politics.Luke currently teaches in the Department of History, Political Science, and Interdisciplinary Studies at Park University. He previously taught in the Humanities Program at the University of Kansas and served as a paraprofessional in student affairs at Missouri Western State University. As someone with close to a decade and a half of experience working in higher education, Luke is committed to inclusive, evidenced-based teaching practices rooted in the science of learning. He is especially committed to helping his students grow as writers and critical thinkers. In fact, he was certified as a writing intensive course instructor by the Faculty Center for Innovation at Park in 2022.

Listed skills include International Relations, Editing, Politics, Political Science, and 22 others.