RGSCP Democracy Summit

Professor Alynna J. Lyon is a Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. Her research interests include multilateralism, moral authority, the United Nations, United States foreign policy and world politics. She is author of US Politics and the United Nations (Lynne Rienner, 2016), co-author of The United Nations in the 21 Century (Routledge, 2022), co-author of The United Nations: 75 Years of Promoting Peace, Human Rights and Development (2020), and co-editor of several books, including Pope Frances Revisited (2026, Palgrave) and Religion and Politics in a Global Society (Lexington, 2013). She is the former chair of the International Organization section of the International Studies Association (2016-2018), former Editor-in-Chief of Global Governance (2018-2024) and currently serves as a Faculty Fellow for the New Hampshire Humanities Collaborative. 

Daniel Pi joined the UNH Law faculty in 2023. His research applies economic theory to legal questions across diverse subject areas including torts, contracts, criminal law, and constitutional law. Professor Pi was previously on the faculties of George Mason University, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and the University of Maine, where he taught contracts, criminal law, criminal procedure, philosophy of law, feminist jurisprudence, and law and economics. He was elected by the class of 2019 to be the faculty speaker at graduation. Professor Pi majored in film and television production as an undergraduate at NYU. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Minnesota. He is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar and holds doctorates in law and economics from the University of Bologna and the University of Hamburg. He was the 2014 recipient of the European Association of Law and Economics Göran Skogh Award.

Dante Scala is a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. He has been an observer of New Hampshire politics for more than two decades, and has written two books on the Granite State and the presidential nomination process, as well as numerous shorter works.

Sue Siggelakis is a Professor of Political Science and Justice Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She earned a BA in Political Science from Rutgers College and a Ph.D. in Public law from the Johns Hopkins University. She teaches courses in constitutional law, law and society and political thought and is the coordinator of the Justice Studies Program and Co-Director of the UNH-in-Budapest study abroad program. Professor Siggelakis is a long serving officer of UNH's Phi Beta Kappa chapter.

James Wible completed doctoral work in economics at Penn State University where he was also a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in the Humanities.  In that program, he studied the philosophies of Aristotle, Rawls, and American pragmatism. Other interdisciplinary studies were in the history of psychology and cognitive psychology.  In economics, Professor Wible’s research has focused on the history and methodology of macroeconomics and its theory of anticipating the future known as rational expectations. In 1998 he published, The Economics of Science: Methodology and Epistemology as if Economics Really Mattered and in 2023, The Economics of Scientific Misconduct: Fraud, Replication Failure and Research Ethics in Empirical Inquiry. Most of Professor Wible’s academic career has been with the Department of Economics, Paul College of Business and Economics, at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. He has served in several administrative positions as department chair, associate dean, and interim dean.  He has taught courses in macroeconomics, money and banking, law and economics, the economics of sports, and the philosophy and economics of science. His undergraduate degree in economics is from Wheaton College, Illinois, including a summer term in Europe when the US abandoned the gold-standard. These experiences led to a graduate degree and life-long interests in economics.

Minh Ly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont and author of Answering to Us: Why Democracy Demands Accountability from Princeton University Press. Josiah Ober, the former chair of political science at Stanford, writes, "Answering to Us is a wide ranging and profound exploration of the fundamental value of collective self-government and what it takes to have and keep it. Ly’s original argument for democracy as equal accountability draws on an extraordinary mastery of political history, moral philosophy, and empirical social science."  Anna Stilz, distinguished professor at Berkeley, adds that this powerful book "is a must-read for anyone interested in the fate of democracy in our times." Professor Ly’s research and teaching focus on democratic theory, economic justice, human rights, and civic education.  Before joining UVM, he was a Lecturer at Stanford University and a postdoc at Princeton.