Virginia Tilley

Professor Virginia Tilley holds an MA in Contemporary Arab Studies from Georgetown University (1988)and an MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1993 and 1997 respectively). Her first field is Middle East studies with a focus on Israel-Palestine, but she also has robust research experience in Central America, post-apartheid South Africa and Oceania (Fiji and the small island states of the south Pacific).

In her research, Dr. Tilley combines constructivist theory of international relations and the comparative politics of nation-building to examine how ethnic, racial and national identities have been imagined and manipulated to serve state power in the context of modern nation-building. Her research has included working among the Maya and Nahua indigenous peoples in Central America, the Jewish and Palestinian peoples in the Middle East, the i-Taukei and Indo-Fijians in Fiji and the multiple identities operating in post-apartheid South Africa. Reflecting her interest in applied theory and policy-making, she has concentrated on exploring how such identities can be re-imagined or re-mapped to improve prospects for conflict resolution.

In addition to numerous articles and policy papers on these questions, Dr. Tilley is author of three books: Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation and Power in El Salvador (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), which examines the historical construction of indianidad (“Indian-ness”) in Latin American nation-building; The One State Solution (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), which offers a pragmatic analysis of the one- and two-state solutions to the conflict in Israel-Palestine; and, as volume editor and co-author, Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Pluto Press, 2012), a legal study of whether Israel’s policies in the OPT are consistent with apartheid and colonialism. At Southern Illinois University, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in ethnic and racial ideology and conflict, nation-building, humanitarian intervention, and Middle East politics.