Susan Gaines

PG Teaching Assistant in Research Methods and in Human Rights

• Name: Dr. N. Susan Gaines
• Position: PG Teaching Assistant in Research Methods and in Human Rights
• Room:3.02
• Fax:+44 (0)20 7679 4969
• Email: s.gaines@ucl.ac.uk

Introduction

N. Susan Gaines is a political theorist currently serving as a post-graduate teaching assistant for Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods as well as Human Rights. She holds a B.A. in political science, philosophy and history from the University of Louisville, an M.A. in political science from Louisiana State University, and she will complete her PhD from Louisiana State University in December 2010. Her graduate training has been in political theory, research methodology, and American politics.

Susan’s PhD research develops a theory of human needs as the source of individual, governmental, and supragovernmental obligation. Designed to remedy some of the shortcomings of the rights language, she asserts that needs allow for some universal standards, while simultaneously promoting greater autonomy and subjectivity in determining the validity of need-claims. Likewise, she claims that needs address human potentiality in a way that rights do not. Specifically, she argues that for a needs-based language to be successful, it must be decoupled from Kantian rationalism, and a form of sentimentalism must be incorporated into the public sphere.

Susan also has research interests in the history of political thought (particularly ancient and early modern thinkers), ethical theory, citizenship and identity, and non-traditional sources of political and ethical ideas. She has also published work in American politics, examining the determinants of opinion on gay rights issues in the United States.