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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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Angana P. Chatterji is Co-chair, Project on Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights, Center for Social Sector Leadership-Haas, University of California, Berkeley. A cultural anthropologist, Dr. Chatterji’s scholarly work focuses on issues of gendered violence; nationalism and minoritization; religion in the public sphere; and cultural survival. Between 1989-2002, she worked with the Indian Social Institute, Planning Commission of India, and Asia Forest Network, on issues of community land tenure. Between 1997-2011, Chatterji served on the faculty in the Anthropology Department at the Ca. Inst. of Integral Studies, where she co-created a graduate curriculum in postcolonial anthropology. In 2005-2006, she convened a people’s tribunal in Odisha, calling attention to issues of majoritarian nationalism. In 2008-2012, Chatterji co-founded and was co-convener of the People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Jammu & Kashmir, and her collaborative work called attention to the issue of unknown and mass graves. Chatterji is a founding-member of the South Asia Feminist Preconference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has served on human rights commissions and offered expert testimony at the United Nations, European Parliament, United Kingdom Parliament, and United States Congress. Chatterji’s publications include: Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present; Narratives from Orissa (2009); Land and Justice: The Struggle for Cultural Survival (forthcoming); a co-edited volume, Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia; Notes on the Postcolonial Present (2013); a co-contributed anthology, Kashmir (2011); and the reports entitled, BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir (2009), Communalism in Orissa (2006), and Without Land or Livelihood (2004), for which she was lead author.
Gina Cosentino is a human rights, environmental, conservation and international development leader with two decades of experience at the local, national and international levels, working with communities, NGOs, governments and the private sector. She has extensive experience in social and environmental sustainability and operationalizing best practices and human rights based approaches to conservation and development. She is also a leading practitioner in international human and environmental policy and rights norms, policy and standard-setting. More recently, she has worked as the Global Director of Indigenous and Communal Conservation at The Nature Conservancy, was the senior advisor to the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and to the President of the Metis National Council in Canada, and was the president of a boutique public affairs firm where she was listed on the Top 100 Public Affairs specialists in Canada. Gina’s work supports strengthening governance, sustainable livelihoods, and participatory approaches that strengthen the roles of Indigenous peoples in making decisions that will shape their futures and positively impact their lands, territories, waters and natural resources while promoting healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. Gina was an instructor in the department of political science at the University of Toronto. She is also a frequent television, print and social media political and social commentator.
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.
