Laura Roskos

Before her Consortium fellowship, Laura Roskos had earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary Modern Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also taught courses at the intersection of women’s and peace studies. Dr. Roskos coordinated the activities of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies at the Radcliffe Institute and produced the public radio series “Voices of Public Intellectuals,” bringing feminist perspectives on civil society to a national audience. She also organized a curriculum development workshop in interdisciplinary gender studies for faculty at universities in the People’s Republic of China. While a fellow, Dr. Roskos was based at the Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons School of Management. Her research focused on the career strategies of professional women in the international security sector as these intersect with organizational practices and institutional norms. The goal of this applied research was to work with these professional women in order to help them develop and appreciate the linkages between diversity and their organizations’ strategic missions. Dr. Roskos's work eventually turned to the implementation of CEDAW in the United States. The culmination of her fellowship with the Consortium was her Consortium Working Paper, paper "International Law, National Sovereignty and Local Norms: What's to Become of CEDAW in the U.S.?"