Research, Reflection and Results: Joseph Lasky ’18 MA’s Villanova Foundation

Joseph Lasky ’18 MA loves research, and he’s been pursuing it at a high level for nearly a decade. While his academic journey began during his undergraduate studies, he held his first formal research position as a research assistant at Villanova University while earning his master’s degree in political science.

That experience marked a turning point, laying the foundation for a path that ultimately led to his current position at Harvard University, where he is a postdoctoral researcher with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His work there builds on research he conducted during his doctoral studies at Cornell University.

But it’s Villanova’s graduate program in Political Science that Lasky credits with preparing him for the demands and opportunities of his postdoctoral work. Returning to the classroom after time away from academia, he found the experience both challenging and transformative.

“Villanova retrained how I approached reading and writing,” Lasky said. “I was really pushed and challenged to rethink my preconceived notions and revisit the knowledge that I had.”

At Villanova, Lasky said he found an environment that encouraged engagement, active participation and provided small class sizes and discussion-based learning spaces for students to contribute meaningfully, ask questions and challenge one another’s ideas.

“It was just this rich discussion every day,” Lasky said. “It instilled more confidence in me the more I contributed to it.”

Courses and faculty also played a defining role in his experience. Reflecting on his time in the program, Lasky pointed to both his first and final classes as especially impactful.

“I walked into those classrooms and immediately was firing on all cylinders—it was just a really rich discussion and engagement right away,” Lasky said.

Equally important were the mentors in the Department of Political Science who supported him throughout his time at Villanova. He emphasized that their guidance played a pivotal role in setting him on the path to earning his doctorate at Cornell and ultimately pursuing postdoctoral work at Harvard.

“Dr. [Olukunle] Owolabi and Dr. [Jennifer] Dixon were really important mentors for me,” Lasky said. “I met with Dr. Dixon regularly to talk about what I was working on and how to keep pushing myself forward, all with an eye toward the PhD.”

Now, his postdoctoral position provides him with a rare opportunity to slow down and focus deeply on the quality of his work—an aspect he values greatly.

“I spend most of my time writing and analyzing the data that I collected during my dissertation phase,” Lasky said. “Now I get to refine some of the papers I wrote, write some new papers and analyze some of the survey data that I collected but wasn’t able to get to during the PhD.”

Lasky’s research interests include narratives of conflict, the relationship between violence and political behavior and the role of violence in shaping social and political identities. He was previously a visiting scholar at the University of Douala in Cameroon.

“The postdoc allows me to embrace the creative side of research and writing,” Lasky said. “It really gives me space to reflect on the type of work I want to do and create the best work that I can, all the while getting feedback from different angles that I didn’t have access to before.”

Next, he’ll be a lecturer at Columbia University, carrying with him the lessons, mentorship, and experiences that began at Villanova. As he looks ahead, Lasky encourages future students in the graduate Political Science program at Villanova to embrace both the challenges and opportunities that come with graduate study.

“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed at first; a lot of the value in the classroom is co-created through the discussion that you bring,” Lasky said. “Come with curiosity and don’t be afraid to contribute, even if you’re not sure you’re right.”