Professor of government combines qualitative and analytical approaches

By Susan Peterson

Special to the Gazette

When governments work together to lift or impose international sanctions, Professor of Government Lisa Martin pays attention. She spends a lot of her time assessing the dynamics of international relations, including cooperative decisions about sanctions and their effects.

In fact, her career began with a major decision of her own.

Shortly after graduating from the California Institute of Technology with a biology degree, Martin was working at the Scripps Clinic lab in San Diego and suddenly realized that laboratory work was not her calling.

She entered Harvard's Ph.D. program in government the following year.

"I made a big switch in fields," she explained in a recent interview. "I knew I wanted to be an academic and had taken a few courses in international economics and international relations. I really enjoyed it."

She also admits she didn't exactly know what she was getting into.

"The first year of graduate school was quite a shock; I had to do a lot of catching up," Martin recalled. "My interests were undefined when I started my program, but I quickly zeroed in on political economy and international relations theory as two that intrigued me the most."

After serving on the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, for several years, Martin was convinced by her Harvard mentor Robert Keohane to return to Cambridge. (Keohane, former Stanfield Professor of International Peace, has since moved to Duke University.)

Martin joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and was promoted to full professor in July 1996. She is currently one of 52 tenured women in the FAS, up from 40 when she joined the Faculty. Granted tenure at age 34, she is one of the youngest women ever tenured by the FAS.

In a field that has experienced dramatic change since the end of the Cold War, Martin's areas of expertise -- international political economy and international relations -- have remained a core part of a political science education.

Martin's doctoral dissertation, in which she conducted six case studies assessing how and why economic sanctions are imposed, provided the groundwork for her consequent research interests.

Her first book, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (1992), explored conditions leading to the successful imposition of international sanctions, using game theory to differentiate three varieties of cooperation. Her second manuscript, Democratic Commitments, continues to investigate conditions for international cooperation.

"Lisa Martin has one of the keenest analytical minds in the field, and this is especially apparent in her use of mathematical models for training new, young scholars," said department chair Kenneth Shepsle, George D. Markham Professor of Government.

One reason for Martin's popularity as a teacher is her flexibility in using various research methods, whether the circumstances demand a qualitative or analytical approach.

"I've always tried to combine research methods because I think they each have their drawbacks and advantages," Martin explained. "And I'm trying to train the people I'm working with to use the appropriate method for a particular question, and to not feel that 'I'm a numbers person, and I always have to run a regression right,' or 'I'm a case-study person, and I always have to spend a year in the country I'm studying.' You need different methods for different areas of research."

A conversation with Lisa Martin reveals how much of her time and energy is focused on students. She is teaching undergraduate and graduate students, as well as guiding a few seniors on their honors theses. Tack on research, a recently finished book manuscript and the starting of another, and dealing with a broken leg last fall, one wonders if she has any time for herself.

But Martin has managed that, too, with yet another big decision in her life.

"I just moved to the suburbs a year ago, and I'm trying to adjust to that," she said with a laugh.