Bio:  Michael Bosia, a San Francisco native, served as a legislative assistant, consultant, and staff director in the California State Senate before beginning doctoral studies at Northwestern University. He began in politics organizing a campus chapter of Students for Economic Democracy and serving on the statewide steering committee.  Drawing from his early work on AIDS policy in the 1980s, Bosia focuses on the connection between two key dimensions in politics: the relationship between movements and the state, and the intersection of ethics and action. His work is highly contextual, examining movements within ongoing historical struggles over the obligations of the state, the moral dimension of policy, and the legal and cultural extension of citizenship. His initial focus on accountability for the failure of early HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in France and the US - including the failure to secure the blood supply - has expanded to include contestation within the transnational AIDS activist movement over the globalization of medical research and the demands of a global regime linking science, capital, and government.

His research and publications explore identity and marginalization, the mythic and ethical dimensions of both identity and politics, the responsibilities of state officials and policy makers, criminal accountability for policy failure within democratic settings, and postcolonial responses to global regimes. More recently, Bosia is looking into the local responses to global agriculture in the US and France.

Teaching interests include: comparative politics; European politics; political violence, democratization, and transitional justice; French domestic and international politics; the politics of race, gender, and sexuality; food as a political, economic, and cultural system; local responses to globalization; film, culture, and politics.

Bosia moved to Vermont with his partner, Steven Obranovich, in 2004.  They live in Hardwick, a small community in the state's rural Northeast Kingdom.

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