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Each year, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights welcomes a select number of visiting scholars to conduct research on a variety of human rights topics. Past visiting scholars have included federal judges, attorneys, trailblazers in NGO advocacy, academics and medical doctors. These scholars have come from more than 35 countries and form an essential part of ISHR’s global community of human rights researchers, scholars, and advocates.
Prospective scholars and others interested in researching human rights are encouraged to explore the biographies of some of our recent scholars below. Use the tabs below to sort through our scholars by research specialization. Click here for a list of additional visiting scholars.
To learn more about the Visiting Scholars Program and how to apply, click here.
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Sandra Ristovska is a filmmaker. She earned her PhD in communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in the role of visuals in achieving social change and human rights. Currently, she looks at the institutionalization and professionalization of video advocacy by human rights organizations as facilitated by unfolding changes in technology, journalism and law. Sandra is a recipient of the Top Paper Award from the Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division at the International Communication Association (ICA) and the Herbert Schiller Prize from the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Her academic writings have appeared in The Communication Review, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, the American Journal of Sociology, the World Policy Institute Blog and Public Books. Sandra is a co-chair of the Emerging Scholars Network of IAMCR, co-director of CAMRA, an interdisciplinary media collective, and an honorary, non-resident Research Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University in Hungary. She recently worked as a cinematographer on a documentary exploring the film industry in Myanmar as affected by the political changes post 2011.
Dr. Rebecca Adami was a visiting research scholar at the Department of Arts and Humanities, Teachers College. Her post doc project titled “Women of the Declaration: Exploring Counternarratives on Human Rights from 1946-48” centers on the UN female delegates who where part of drafting the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Her research interest is on the broad study of human rights in the field of philosophy of education. In her PhD thesis, titled “Human Rights Learning: the Significance of Narratives, Relationality and Uniqueness”, Dr. Adami explored human rights learning through a narrative turn that focus on learners and teachers life stories, drawing on the work of Hanna Arendt and Adriana Cavarero. Her published work includes articles such as “Re-Thinking Relations in Human Rights Education: The Politics of Narratives.” in Journal of Philosophy of Education and “Towards Cosmopolitan Ethics in Teacher Education: An Ontological Dimension of Learning Human Rights”, in Ethics and Education. Dr. Adami has taught university courses for teacher students on multiculturalism and diversity at the Department of Education, Stockholm University. Contact: ra2712@columbia.edu
Katrine Bregengaard is a researcher an curator based in New York. Her work seeks to critically investigate the genealogy of human rights theory, practice and their claim to universality, particularly in relation to their visual representation in exhibitions, museums and digital media. She is the founder of the Human Rights Exhibition Project — a traveling research initiative exhibiting the archive of UNESCO’s Human Rights Exhibition from 1949. She has exhibited her research on in New York, Copenhagen and Galway and is currently organizing exhibitions in Paris and Perth. Katrine holds an MA in Human Rights from Columbia University and a BA in Philosophy from Copenhagen university. She has previously worked on safe migration and labour rights in Kathmandu and at Danish Mission to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and is currently building a digital archive directory based on the historical use of photography, digital media and the arts in the human rights field.
Ulrike Capdepón (Ph.D in Political Sciences, University of Hamburg 2011). She is an associate Researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). After leaving the graduate school, she has been a Marie Curie-Fellow at the Center for Human Science and Humanities (CCHS) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Konstanz in the European Research Council Project “Narratives of Terror and Disappearance”. Her research interests include human rights policies, memory studies and transitional justice in Latin America and Spain, as well as national and international prosecutions of human rights crimes and enforced disappearance. In her new project, she analyzes the challenges and contradictions that arise in the application of universal jurisdiction in foreign tribunals as a mechanism for coming to terms with a repressive past. The current attempts to prosecute the crimes related to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship in a court in Buenos Aires is one of her case studies.
Antonio Cisneros de Alencar is the Programme Coordinator of the United Nations’ OHCHR Country Office in Guatemala, having assisted in the integration of international human rights norms, including those related to indigenous peoples’ rights, into national plans and programmes in other countries like Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, Nicaragua, the United States of America, and Venezuela during these past 15 years, through his work with OHCHR. Mr. Cisneros holds a Master’s degree in development studies from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Mexico, and Bachelor’s degrees in Communications and in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida, in the United States of America.
Ann Marie Clark is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University specializing in international relations. Her research interests include theories of human rights norms in international relations, the influence of non-governmental organizations on state behavior, theories of global justice, and how ideas about right and wrong are put into practice by global political actors.
Jagoda Rošul-Gajić earned her Ph.D. from Universität der Bundeswehr München, Institute of Political Science, in the Department of International Relations in Germany. Her research focuses on the implementation of international women’s human rights norms into domestic policies in post-war Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on the role of norm advocates at the level of the state, in this case mainly on women’s non-governmental organizations and grassroots groups. Since July 2013 Jagoda has been granted a research fellowship from the Hans Böckler Foundation, Germany. Her work is published in academic and journalistic forums. In the 90s Jagoda was a human rights activist in Croatia and has established two NGOs. From October 2012 till June 2013 she was a head of education section at the FAM-Frauenakademie München e.V. (Women's Academy) in Germany.
Radwan Ziadeh is the Head of the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice established by the Syrian Interim Government to work on the transitional justice. He is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria and co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the managing editor of the Transitional Justice in the Arab World Project. He is also a member of the Syrian National Preparatory committee for Transitional Justice. He was involved in documenting the ongoing human rights violations in Syria and testified at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He was elected in October 2011 as director of the Foreign Relations Office of the Syrian National Council until he resigned from the position in November 2012. In 2009 he was awarded the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Academic Freedom award in Boston; and in 2010 he accepted the Democracy Courage Tributes award on behalf of the human rights movement in Syria, given by the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta, Indonesia. His most recent book is Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2011).
Ahmed Hussain Adam is a prominent Sudanese politician and scholar from Darfur. Mr. Adam studied law in Sudan and public international law in the UK, where he received his LL/M in International Law from Westminster University, London 1999. Mr. Adam has been a prominent voice for the people of Darfur and all oppressed Sudanese. He has been one of the principal negotiators on behalf of the people of Darfur in various peace talks sponsored by international and regional organizations such as the United Nations, the African Union, and the Arab League. Mr. Adam was a Visiting Scholar and co-chair of the Two Sudans Forum at ISHR. Mr. Adam is also writing a book manuscript on Darfur titled: Darfur Betrayed: An Insider Perspective. The proposed book attempts to offer a scholarly and insider perspective on Darfur peace processes since 2004. The book will critically examine the role and response of the regional and international community to the crisis of Darfur.
Alexander Dukalskis earned a dual Ph.D. in Political Science and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame where his research focused on authoritarian regimes, transitional justice, and international human rights norms. Alex's dissertation examined the ways in which dominant state ideologies in North Korea and Burma help sustain authoritarian rule and he has conducted fieldwork in Myanmar, Thailand, and Korea for this project. Alex has also worked with the International Debate Education Association (IDEA) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) to help build debate clubs and networks of young people in, among other places, China, Burma, Israel & the West Bank, Nepal, Uganda, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Jordan. Alex's published work is in print or forthcoming in Human Rights Quarterly, the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Review, Communist & Post-Communist Studies, and Democratization.
Associate Professor Sarah Maddison is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. Her fellowship project is a four-year comparative project exploring dialogue and reconciliation in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, and Australia. She has published widely in the fields of social movements, Indigenous political culture, and Australian democracy. Her recent books include Black Politics: Inside the complexity of Aboriginal political culture (Allen and Unwin 2009), Beyond White Guilt: The real challenge to Black-White relations in Australia (Allen and Unwin 2011), and the co-edited collection Unsettling the settler state: Creativity and resistance in Indigenous Settler-state governance (Federation Press 2011).
Paul Mikov is currently Executive Advisor for Policy & External Affairs at the Boris Trajkovski International Foundation, supporting the Foundation’s work with partners such as the Clinton Global Initiative, UNDP and UNICEF in New York, as well as the USAID in Washington DC. After several years in non-profit management and ministerial work in Southern California, Paul joined World Vision International (WVI) in 2003, where he held senior management and leadership roles for about ten years, specializing in humanitarian affairs and policy and advocacy. The last six years, Paul was the Director of WVI’s NY office and the organization’s UN Representative, until August 2012. In that role, Paul worked across the key portfolios of the industry (humanitarian, development, policy/advocacy), and across the most strategic domains: UN, governmental, non-governmental, media, corporate/foundations, and the faith-based domains. At the UN, Paul played pivotal roles in engagements with the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, the Secretariat, and the key specialized agencies, funds and programs of the UN, in particular UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, and WHO. Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management, two masters’ degrees, and has completed half of the program towards a Doctor of Philosophy.
Jonathan Papoulidis is Senior Advisor, Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Affairs for a major international non-governmental aid agency. He previously served with the United Nations on three continents, including in Indonesia as UN Special Advisor for Aceh and Nias and before that, as Chief of Policy and Programmes for the UN’s recovery coordination efforts in Aceh and Nias. He also served in the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia as advisor to the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary- General for Recovery and Governance. Prior to these roles, he worked with UN OCHA at Headquarters and in the field. He has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge where he was editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. He was Coordinator of Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Affairs at York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies and former executive committee member of the International Studies’ Association Peace Section.
Robert Robinson earned his PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of Georgia in 2012. He is currently at work completing a book on the relationship between responsibility and theories of distributive justice, due out from Palgrave Macmillon in 2014. He has published articles, comments, and reviews in areas of moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of law.
Jarrett Zigon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include morality, subjectivity, and institutional spaces of disciplinary practice. These interests are taken up from the perspective of an anthropologist strongly influenced by post-Heideggerian phenomenology and critical theory. He has completed two research projects in Russia: one on the relationship between personal experience and moral conceptions, and a second on Russian Orthodox Church drug rehabilitation programs as spaces for moral training. His current research focuses on human rights as a transnational moral discourse. His articles can be found in Anthropological Theory, Ethnos, and Ethos among other journals. His books including Morality: An Anthropological Perspective (2008, Berg), Making the New Post-Soviet Person: Narratives of Moral Experience in Contemporary Moscow (2010, Brill),and HIV is God’s Blessing: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia (2011, University of California Press).
