Richard Kilroy, an associate professor of politics at Coastal Carolina University, has been selected as a nonresident scholar in Rice University's Mexico Center, a part of the Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Kilroy, a faculty member at CCU since 2014, has been researching and writing on Mexico, particularly regarding security and defense issues, since completing his doctoral dissertation on civil-military relations in Mexico at the University of Virginia. Before teaching full time, Kilroy served as an Army Military Intelligence Officer and Latin America Foreign Area Officer, to include being assigned to the Defense Attaché Office in Mexico City and attending the Mexican War College as an exchange officer, as well as serving as the Mexico desk officer for the U.S. Southern Command in Panama.

Kilroy will spend Fall 2020 at Rice University doing research on U.S.-Mexico security relations, visiting the border and giving lectures. As part of his fellowship, he will write an annual research paper to be published on the Mexico Center's website. His work will benefit current and future intelligence students at CCU.

"My students will gain new insights from my research, particularly on border security, which will particularly inform my homeland security courses," Kilroy said.

His more recent scholarly work has focused on North American security, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, co-authoring a book, "North American Regional Security: A Trilateral Framework?" published by Lynne Rienner in 2012, with colleagues from Canada and Mexico, as well as a number of journal articles on the topic of regional security cooperation.

His most recent book chapter, co-authored with Abelardo Rodriguez of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, titled "United States and Mexico Future Security and Defense Scenarios: From Convergence to Divergence?" will be published in a book titled "The Future of U.S. Mexico Relations" by Rice University later this year.

In January 2018, Kilroy traveled to Mexico City to participate in a series of presentations on North American security with Rodriguez and Todd Hataley from Canada. They spoke to students at Ibero University, as well as Mexican military officers at the Mexican Naval War College, and intelligence analysts at Mexico's Center for Criminal Investigations.

In February 2019, Rodriguez visited Coastal Carolina as part of the Great Decisions program on U.S. foreign policy. In addition to the Saturday morning community academic outreach program, he spoke to students taking classes in international relations and U.S. foreign policy on Mexican politics. He also spoke to students at Blackwater Middle School on Mexico's cultural heritage sites.

In May 2019, Kilroy was an invited speaker at the Mexico Center's program "A Midyear Review of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's (AMLO) Administration." Kilroy spoke on AMLO's new National Plan for Peace and Security and the formation of a hybrid police/military National Guard force, which has been in the news recently, being deployed to Mexico's northern and southern border to help with migrants coming from Central America.