Dr. Monica Eppinger
Associate Professor and Co-Director, Center for International and Comparative Law
St. Louis University School of Law
Monica Eppinger is an anthropologist of law and state formation with focus on Ukraine and on the United States. She undertakes study of law as an investigation at the intersection of language and power. She is particularly interested in how our ideas and practices of organizing space affect social organization. This theme has led her to topics ranging from racial segregation to agriculture to national security. Dr. Eppinger's current projects are pursuing several lines of inquiry, notably into: 1) post-Cold War state formation; 2) national security and executive power; 3) gender in the law and conduct of war; and 4) property and social precarity.
Dr. Eppinger has published in both law and anthropology, including in the American Journal of Comparative Law, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, the Journal of Food Law and Policy, HAU: a Journal of Ethnographic Theory, and the Cultural Anthropology Fieldsights series. Her essays have appeared on scholarly blogs including Books & Ideas (published in French as La Vie des idees), the Comparative Law Prof Blog, and Anthropoliteia and she has been featured as an expert on CNN, public radio, and other popular media.
Professor Eppinger's first career was as a U.S. diplomat, working on U.S. policy towards the former Soviet space, towards West Africa, and on energy security. She was awarded an individual Superior Honor award from the State Department in 1999. She holds a B.A. from Yale College, an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is currently an associate professor of law and of anthropology at Saint Louis University, where she also serves as Co-Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law. She is proficient in Ukrainian and Russian and conversant in Chinese (Mandarin), Hausa, and French.