Dr. Conor O’Dwyer holds a
joint appointment in the Center
for European Studies and the
Department of Political Science.
He is a scholar of post-communist and contemporary Eastern
European politics.
In the last few years, Dr.
O’Dwyer has been focused on a
new project exploring the politics of homosexuality after communism.
In particular, he is examining
the organization and appearance
of LGBT activism in Eastern
Europe from the late 1980s to
2012 through the comparison of
several cases. He has already unearthed some interesting and
unexpected findings.
These findings suggest that
not only are LGBT movements
in the region’s most tolerant societies less influential than one
might expect, in some of Eastern
Europe’s least gay-friendly societies gay-rights activism has, in
fact, become exceptionally
well-organized.
Dr. O’Dwyer spent the
summer co-leading the UF/CES
Study Abroad in Prague program
where he was able to complete
some additional research for his
project as well as teach a course
on Eastern European politics for
UF undergraduates.
Dr. O’Dwyer teachers Politics
of Eastern Europe, State Building, and Post-communist Politics
at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He has also added two
new courses on Social Movements, which grew out of his
research on LGBT activism.