Rate My Professor Bill Flanik

Bill Flanik is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, where he also serves as Course Director for the Master of International Relations. He earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States and a PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada, completed in 2013. His doctoral thesis demonstrated how U.S. advocates of strategic missile defense prevailed by employing metaphors of "shields," "rogues," "visions," and "journeys" to recast a technocratic policy debate as a broader referendum on American exceptionalism, survival, and progress. Prior to joining Monash, Flanik taught at the University of Waterloo in Canada and Colorado Mesa University in the United States. He has delivered courses across comparative politics, peace and conflict studies, and international relations.

Flanik's research specializations encompass Foreign Policy Analysis, Security Studies, Peace and Conflict, International Relations, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Discourse Analysis, U.S. Foreign Policy, Gender, Active Learning, Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphors, and Privatization of Security. He specializes in international relations, peace and conflict studies, and U.S. foreign policy, while also advancing scholarship on teaching and learning, including metaphors in pedagogy, cross-cultural perceptions of active learning, and presentation design. Key publications include "Active learning and the graduate classroom: how gender and international student status affect preferences and experiences" (2022, Journal of Political Science Education, co-authored with Steven Zech, Maria Rost Rublee, and Aleksandar Deejay); "Mapping metaphorical frames of U.S. strategic defense" (2019, SAGE Research Cases in Politics and International Relations); "Analogies and Metaphors and Foreign Policy Decision-making" (2018, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, edited by Cameron G. Thies); and "Bringing FPA Back Home: Cognition, Constructivism, and Conceptual Metaphor" (2011, Foreign Policy Analysis). A teacher at heart, Flanik contributes to Monash's graduate programs preparing students for careers in diplomacy, international organizations, NGOs, and government.