Rights Activism under Political Uncertainty (RightAct)

Professor of Political Science (Department of Administration and Organization Theory) and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen

Siri Gloppen is the founding Director of LawTransform and current Co-Director. She is a political scientist with a research agenda at the intersection of law and politics, combining a focus on empirical socio-legal studies and political theory. Her work spans legal mobilization and lawfare,  judicial politics and the role of courts in social transformation, gender and judging, democratization, constitution making and institutionalization of accountability structures, election processes, human rights, transitional justice and reconciliation. She has broad experience in leading and participating in cross-regional and interdisciplinary research projects investigating legal mobilization and the role of law and courts in areas such as health, abortion and LGBTIQ+ politics, democratic backlash, climate change, land and water rights and child protection. Her main empirical focus is Southern and Eastern Africa.

Arsène Brice Bado, SJ, PhD, is the Vice President of Academic Affairs at the Centre de Recherche et d’Action pour la Paix (CERAP) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Prior to his time at CERAP, Dr. Bado was a Southern Voices Network Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, from September to November 2015. He was also a visiting researcher at Yale University during the 2014–2015 academic year. He was the 2017–2018 Anna and Donald Waite Endowed Chair at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. His research interests include democracy, ethnic pluralism, conflict analysis, forced migration, electoral processes in conflict ridden societies, and foreign aid in Africa. His publications have appeared in the Journal of International Migration and Integration, Mediterranean Politics, Revue Études, Revue Relations, Débats-Courrier d’Afrique de l’Ouest, and La Civiltà Cattolica. In addition, he has contributed chapters to several books, and in 2015 edited Dynamiques des guerres civiles en Afrique: Une approche holiste. He is the author of Dignity across Borders: Forced Migration and Christian Social Ethics. Dr. Bado holds Bachelor’s Degrees in Philosophy, Socio-Anthropology, and Theology, and Master’s Degrees in Social Ethics, International Human Rights Law, and Socio-Anthropology. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from Laval University in Canada in 2016.

Jaimie Bleck is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.  She specializes in African politics with a focus on democratization, education, participation, and citizenship.  Her first book, Education and Empowered Citizenship in Mali, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2015.  She and Nicolas van de Walle published, Continuity in Change: Electoral Politics in Africa 1990-2015, with Cambridge University Press in 2018.  Her work appears in the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Comparative Political Studies, African Affairs and Democratization. She spent 2014-2015 on sabbatical in Mali as an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow.  Her research has been funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and USAID-DRG.

Professor Bleck is also a concurrent faculty member in the Keough School of Global Affairs, Senior Research Advisor with the The Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity, Faculty Fellow with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and Faculty Affiliate with Notre Dame Program for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (ND PIER).

Alyssa is pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is broadly interested in gender, representation, the political economy of development, and political inequality. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Alyssa conducted research as a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellow at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune, India, and as a Lombard Fellow directing the implementation of a large-scale survey in rural Maharashtra. Through CLEA and McGorrian Fellowships at the American Institute of Indian Studies in the Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute, Alyssa also spent a year learning Marathi in Pune, India. Alyssa has worked for the Women’s Economic Empowerment Unit at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., Vera Solutions in Mumbai, India, Chhori (Daughter) in Kathmandu, Nepal, and McKinsey & Company in Boston, MA. She holds an M.Sc. in Development Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a B.A. in Political Science and South Asian Studies from Dartmouth College.

Jane Mango Angar is pursing her PhD in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. As a comparativist she aims to explore the implications of electoral violence on political accountability, the effects of electoral violence on the long-term welfare of historically marginalized communities and the effectiveness of institutional reforms intended to mitigate the occurrence of electoral violence. She is equally interested in examining the effects of the weaponization of sexual violence against women during political violence on the participation of women in politics as voters and as candidates. Her regional focus is on East Africa.

In 2017 she worked as the assistant editor to the ‘Asian Women’ journal, at the Research Institute of Asian Woman (RIAW), Sookmyung Women’s University. She has also interned with The Asia Foundation, on the Women Business Center and Incubation Project (WBC), a microfinance development project that works to foster women entrepreneurs with small and medium sized business in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Mango has a Masters in Development Policy from the Korea Development Institute (KDI) School of Public Policy and Management, and a Bachelors in Political Science and International Relations from Sookmyung Women’s University in South Korea.

Johanna Reyes Ortega  is pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley focusing on comparative politics and international development. She is particularly interested in exploring how economic shocks generated by mass social phenomena (such as migration patterns or revolutions) can lead to more equitable policies that favor vulnerable populations such as women or the poor, and in evaluating the role of diasporas in promoting economic growth in developing countries, particularly in Latin America. Prior to Berkeley,

Sarah Daniel is pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her thematic research interests include comparative politics, Africa and the African diaspora, and global political economy. In particular, she focuses on the convergence between international development and cross-cultural oppositions to oppression and conflict. Prior to beginning her doctoral program, Sarah worked as a Research and Development Manager in Tanzania, monitoring the efficacy of an NGO’s development projects deployed in villages across the rural Kilimanjaro region. Sarah received her B.A in International Studies at the University of California, Irvine.