Teaching

Teaching politics and international relations is my passion. It’s challenging, fun and keeps me and the students tuned into important political issues and current events. I am always humbled by how much I learn from teaching and from my own students each semester. My goals in teaching are to imbue students with relevant knowledge and critical thinking skills and to help develop skills that are applicable beyond the students’ coursework, such as in research and analysis. Student interest and engagement are central to my teaching approach. At the undergraduate level, I have taught in the areas of international relations, international organizations, international law, human rights, international development and comparative politics.

Research Interests

My general research interests revolve around the private sector in international politics and governance. I’m particularly interested in the international law on the private sector, the roles of private sector actors in global governance and the relationships between the private sector and intergovernmental organizations. My current PhD research focuses on global public-private partnerships between the United Nations and multinational corporations. 

Publications

Riep, C. & Machacek, M. (2020). Interrogating the Private in Public School Outsourcing in Liberia. In (eds) Hogan & Thompson ‘Privatization and Commercialization in Public Education: How the Public Nature of Schooling is Changing’. Routledge: 66-81.

Machacek, M, (2018). ‘Global Public-Private Partnerships and the New Constitutionalism of the Refugee Regime’. Global Constitutionalism, 7(2): 204-235.

Machacek, M. (2017). ‘International Institutions, Global ‘Partnerships’ and the
Structural Power of Multinational Corporations: The UNHCR case study and a new research agenda’. Potentia: Journal of International and Public Affairs, 8: 76-95

Riep, C. & Machacek, M. (2016). ‘Schooling the Poor, Profitably: The innovations and deprivations of Bridge International Academies in Uganda’. Brussels: Education International.

Select Conference Presentations

Embedded Neoliberalism? Neo-Embedded Liberalism? The Political Economy of UN-Business Partnerships, Prairie Political Science Association, Banff, AB, September 2022         

An Uneasy Alliance: UNDP-Business Partnerships for International Development, The Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, University of British Columbia, June 2019

Regime Cohesion and the Structural Power of Capital: Understanding the Political Economies of Global Regimes, International Studies Association’s 60^th Annual Convention, Toronto, ON, March 2019