Faculty & Advocates

Robert Armengol

Robert Armengol is an anthropologist and journalist with two decades of experience in immersive fieldwork, print and radio documentary, and teaching in higher education. Prior to joining the Karsh Institute, Armengol was a Ford Fellow and a postdoctoral College Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 2013. He previously served as a coordinating producer for the public radio show BackStory and as a reporter at Bloomberg News. Armengol is the producer of Democracy in Danger, a podcast on the rise of illiberal and autocratic regimes across the world. 

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Derek Brown

Derek Brown serves as Secretary and Co-Director of the Peace Appeal Foundation, which has supported dialogue and negotiations processes in Lebanon, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Prior to that, he was an executive team member for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a global institution investing in leading social entrepreneurs. He was a 2015-2016 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. A strong internationalist with a deep commitment to social justice, he has worked in both his professional and personal life to nurture social and public innovations across the world by enabling changemakers in diverse societies. 

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Chris Carter

Chris Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and the John L. Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia. He’s also a Research Associate at the Berkeley Center on the Politics of Development. His book project examines the emergence of indigenous rights in the Americas. This research won the 2020 APSA Best Fieldwork Award and the 2021 Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy. Carter’s other work explores local governance in Latin America, methods for causal inference, and the regulation of gig economy labor in the United States.

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Yevgenia Chirikova

Yevgenia Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist. She is known for her opposition to the construction of a motorway through Khimki Forest and her role in the 2011-2013 protests sparked by disputed parliamentary elections. A confrontation with Putin’s regime forced her to flee her country in 2014. Chirikova is now based in Estonia, where she manages Activatica: a Russian-language resource for civic activism.  

She received the: 2011 Women of Courage Award from the US Embassy; 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize; and the 2013 James Lawson Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Practice of Nonviolent Conflict. In 2012, Foreign Policy Magazine named Chirikova a “100 Global Thinker.”

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Dave Edmunds

Dave Edmunds is the Director for the Global Development Studies Track and an Associate Professor of Global Studies at the University of Virginia. He is a human geographer interested in environmental issues as they intersect with culture, social relations, politics, and community development. He holds a PhD from Clark University. Edmunds received a Fulbright award for his fieldwork and a Rockefeller award for his postdoctoral work at the Center for International Forestry Research. He has worked in various countries in Africa and Asia, along with Native American tribal nations in the US.

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Tessa Farmer

Tessa Farmer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Global Studies. She also serves as Director for the Middle East & South Asia Track of the undergraduate Global Studies major. She has been doing fieldwork in Egypt since 2000. Her first book investigates the ways in which lower income residents of Cairo work to obtain sources of potable water and deal with the ramifications of sewage in their urban ecology. She is currently conducting research for her second book project, on charitable water fountains called sabils. 

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Jemhra Garcia

Jemhra Garcia founded the coffee collective Kape Giting with Ana Arca, which advocates for Negrense farmers as they rebuild sustainable food systems in defiance of the colonial single-crop economy. Kape Giting emphasizes environmentally conscious farming practices and responsible consumption. Garcia believes that championing local Philippine produce is a way to promote the welfare of regional farmers and boost the local economy. Garcia is currently partnered on an ethnographic research project focused on how rural farmers and fisherman conceive of democratic political processes based upon the terminology of their local dialects and traditions.

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Amel Gorani

Amel Gorani is an international development, peace and conflict, gender, and inclusion specialist who has worked for numerous international development agencies, governments, private foundations, academic institutions, and NGOs in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the US. Previously, she served as Director for Carleton College’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement, Senior Advisor on Marginalized Groups for USAID-Sudan, Inclusion Coordinator for the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, and Executive Director for the humanitarian organization Sudan Future Care.   

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Gorani holds a Masters degree in Political Science from Uppsala University. She is fluent in Arabic, English, and Swedish.

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Felix Maradiaga

Felix Maradiaga is a prominent figure in Central America known for his expertise in nonviolent resistance and democracy building. As an activist, human rights advocate, and thought leader in nonviolent resistance strategy, he is widely recognized as one of the leading voices within the Nicaraguan democratic opposition against the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. He was recognized with The Peter Gotell Prize in 2021, in Stockholm for his human rights work. In May 2023, a cross-regional coalition of 25 human rights organizations granted him the 2023 Courage Award at the 15th annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. He received the 2023 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award for Outstanding Opposition Figure. In January 2024, a group of prominent figures led by Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana formally nominated Félix alongside Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who is unjustly detained in Nicaragua, for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the lifelong dedication of both Nicaraguan individuals to the pursuit of peace and democracy in Nicaragua.

Evan Mawarire

Evan Mawarire is a Zimbabwean pastor and democratic activist. He founded #ThisFlag, a peaceful movement that ignited public demand for government accountability amidst widespread corruption and proved instrumental in the protests that led to Robert Mugabe’s resignation.  

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Mawarire has received fellowships from Stanford and Yale, as well as the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2016, he was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s “100 Global Thinkers.” Mawarire was nominated for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards in 2017, and the prestigious Per Anger Prize in 2018. Currently, he is the Director of Education at the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Naseemah Mohamed

Naseemah Mohamed is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Humanitarian Collaborative at the University of Virginia. Mohamed received her doctorate in comparative and international education policy as a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the interrelation of education, media, race, global politics, and violence in decolonial movements in Southern Africa during the twentieth century. Her most recent projects document the use of education as a political, ideological, and physical tool of war during Zimbabwe's war of independence from the white settler government in Rhodesia, and the latter’s significance as a global symbol of white supremacy.

Brian Owensby

Brian Owensby is a professor in the Corcoran Department of History, where he also served as the department chair from 2009 to 2012. His books include an investigation of the 20th-century Brazilian middle class, an examination of how indigenous people used law and litigation to assert political rights in  seventeenth-century Mexico, a comparison of Iberian and Anglo imperial legality (with Prof. Richard Ross), and an exploration of economic gain and the struggle over human sociability between Europeans and the Indigenous Guaraní in early-modern South America. His current project is entitled A Moral history of the Rich. Owensby also serves as Director of the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation in the Office of the Vice Provost for Global Affairs.

Steve Parks

Steve Parks is a professor in the Writing and Rhetoric Program at the University of Virginia’s Department of English, and a co-founder of Syrians for Truth and Justice. Currently the editor of Studies in Writing and Rhetoric, Parks’ early work focused on the Students’ Right to Their Own Language, particularly the need to embed the SRTOL’s politics into progressive community partnerships and publications. This led him to create New City Community Press in Philadelphia, which links university classrooms, local communities, and publishing technologies in their efforts to expand human rights. Currently, he is working with Syrian activists to record the human rights abuses of the current regime, ISIS, and militia active in Syria.

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Srdja Popovic

Srdja Popovic was a founding member of the student movement Otpor! (“Resistance!”), which played a crucial role in toppling the Milosevic regime. A co-founder of CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), he now works as a global activist and educator. Popovic has taught university courses on organizing tactics and workshops on how nonviolence can achieve positive social change. He’s also authored several publications on the topic, including the book Blueprint for Revolution.

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Popovic has received the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Brown Democracy Medal, and the 2010 PL-Fonden Freedom Award. Foreign Policy Magazine named Popovic one of their “100 Global Thinkers” in 2011, and the World Economic Forum in Davos listed him as a 2014 Young Global Leader. Since 2021, Popovic has held the position of Visiting Researcher at the University of Virginia.

N. Camilo Sánchez-Leon

N. Camilo Sánchez-Leon joined the University of Virginia Law faculty in 2018 as Director of the International Human Rights Clinic. Prior to this, he served as the Research Director of the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia). Sánchez has also worked as a consultant and legal expert on human rights issues for academic institutions, as well as both inter- and non-governmental organizations. He previously served with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombian Commission of Jurists. Sánchez-Leon has been a regular contributor to the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and writes editorials for numerous law blogs.

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Lori Shorr

Dr. Lori Shorr’s work in education draws from her academic background in critical and cultural studies—focusing on how narratives shape social change—and her 20-year career in education policy, including roles as special assistant to three PA Secretaries of Education and chief education officer for Philadelphia. Her teaching, community work, and student mentoring explore how power, justice, and lived experience intersect with policy and representation.

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Her current research includes collaborating with international democratic activists, editing a journal on activist scholarship, evaluating trauma-informed practices in local schools, and supporting a regional network of educators promoting student-centered, project-based learning. She remains dedicated to strengthening Philadelphia’s schools and nonprofits to expand educational equity and create a more just city.

Lean Sweeney

Lean Sweeney has been an Assistant Professor, General Faculty at UVA since 2019. Her work focuses on the impact of theories of space, frontiers and borderlands on the creation of nations, citizens, and criminality. Her two books, Supervivencia de los bandidos: los mayas icaichés y la política fronteriza del sureste de la península de Yucatán, 1847-1904 (UNAM, 2006), and Emigrados: Migration, Expulsion and Transnational Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico and Guatemala (under review) focus on the frontiers between Mexico, Belize and Guatemala.  She teaches Human Rights in Latin America, Modern Central America, Latin American Borderlands, Race and State in Mexico and Women, Migration and Violence.

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Myo Yan Naung Thein

Myo Yan Naung Thein is a Burmese pro-democracy activist, and the co-founder and former director of the Bayda Institute. He spent more than a decade in various prisons due to his democratic efforts under military dictatorship. In the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Myo Yan Naung Thein was forced to flee his country; he currently serves as a Visiting Researcher in the Department of English at the University of Virginia. He has met with many leaders around the world including US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Jhanisse Vaca-Daza

Jhanisse Vaca-Daza is the founder of Ríos de Pie, which is currently organizing Bolivians citizens to build a society with freedom, justice and respect for environmental rights through nonviolent action and citizenry education. Her activism began as homemade initiatives against Bolivia’s Evo Morales, but has grown to tackle intersectional issues such as human rights and the environment. In addition to leading movements herself, she is a frequent mentor and teacher to other activists around the world. She works closely with the Human Rights Foundation to manage their Freedom Fellowship program. She is a frequent author on the democratic struggle in Bolivia, with her writing appearing in The Oslo Times.

Levi Vonk

Levi Vonk is the Guerrant Global Health Equity Professor in the Global Studies Program at the University of Virginia. A medical anthropologist and creative nonfiction author, he conducts ethnographic research with Central American migrants traveling through Mexico. His first book, Border Hacker, was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. It traces the history of migrant caravans and migrant political activism in Mexico through the journey of Axel Kirschner, an undocumented migrant and computer hacker. Levi worked with Axel to create what they call “multi-narrator nonfiction,” a methodology in which the subject co-authors portions of their story in their own first-person voice. His next book is an ethnographic and political history of border militarization and externalization in Mexico.