Virginia Haufler (Cornell 1991) is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is affiliated with the Center for International Development and Conflict Prevention, and the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda. She previously directed the program on the private sector at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work centers on the role of international business in political and economic affairs, focusing in particular on global governance, transnational regulatory affairs, and corporate social responsibility.

She has been consulted by the UN, think tanks, and NGOs, and has lectured widely on these topics. While on sabbatical in 2009, she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Irvine and a non-resident fellow at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

She is writing a book on corporations and conflict prevention, and developing a project with Deborah Avant on the security strategies of non-state actors. She is also developing new work on the ways in which corporate social responsibility and philanthropy intersect with public diplomacy.

Her publications include "The Kimberly Process, Club Goods, and Public Enforcement of a Private Regime," in Prakash and Potoski, eds. Voluntary Programs (forthcoming); "Governing Corporations in Zones of Conflict: Issues, Actors, and Institutions" in Avant, Finnemore, and Sell, eds. Who Governs the Globe? (forthcoming); "International Diplomacy and the Privatization of Conflict Prevention," International Studies Perspectives (2004); A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy (2001); and Private Authority and International Affairs co-eds. with Cutler and Porter (1999).