Our Visiting Scholars & Practitioners-in-Residence

The Sié Center is proud to host visiting scholars and practitioners-in-residence who enrich our community. 

Visiting Scholars

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to professors, lecturers and researchers with independent funding who wish to spend one month to one year at the Sié Center to pursue research activities. Visiting scholars will receive access to the university facilities, including the libraries; email privileges; office space; and the opportunity to meet and work with students and colleagues with similar academic interests. Depending on the length of their stay, vsiting scholars may be asked to give guest lectures or teach a course related to their research during the term of their appointment and give a presentation at the Korbel Research Seminar (KRS) Series. 

Dr. Roudabeh Kishi, a woman wearing tortoiseshell glasses, dangling earrings, and a black button-down shirt smiles at the camera as she stands in front of an abstract geometric background.

Dr. Roudabeh Kishi

Dr. Roudabeh Kishi is an expert on political violence and data methodologies — consulting on such projects for a variety of clients for over a decade, including governments, INGOs, humanitarian organizations, and research centers. Her research focuses on strategies to best measure and quantify the risk of political violence. Her work appears in various outlets, ranging from scholarly journals and academic books, to policy briefs and white papers, to op-eds and mainstream blogs, and has been cited widely, including by media outlets around the world. She received her Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, and she is a member of the Board of Trustees for Videre Est Credere, which focuses on supporting local communities around the world to document human rights violations, to demand accountability and secure justice. She holds an affiliation at Princeton University, and previously directed research, including global data collection, at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). You can read more about her background and her work here, and read her recent publications by clicking on the links below.

Weeam, a young woman, smiles into the camera as she wears a light pink headscarf and patterned top. She stands in front of a desert background.

Dr. Weeam Hammoudeh

Dr. Weeam Hammoudeh is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, a Visiting Scientist at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and co-Director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Brown University, and an MPH in Community and Public Health from Birzeit University. Her research seeks to understand how political, social and structural factors shape health, as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural transformations.  She is active in various research and policy networks, including the Reproductive Health Working Group (RHWG), the Palestine-Global Mental Health network, the Palestinian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Research for Health in Conflict (R4HC), and a policy member at Al-Shabaka. Click on the links below to read some of Dr. Hammoudeh's recent publications!

Apply to Be a Visiting Scholar

Interested scholars should us send their curriculum vitae, a two-page description of their research project (including why affiliation with the Sié Center would be beneficial), a statement of financial support, and the proposed dates of residency. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. 

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Practitioners-in-Residence

The Sié Center brings prominent practitioners from government and non-governmental organizations to the Korbel School for a set time—whether several days, weeks, or a quarter—to share practical insight and expertise with students and faculty. Depending on the length of their stay, practitioners may teach a class, guest lecture, hold public lectures, share field knowledge or policy conundrums, and give career advice to students. Equally important, practitioners-in-residence advise on the relevancy of particular approaches to research to ensure that Sié Center research responds to contemporary policy concerns and strategies. 

Practitioners-in-residence may be nominated by any member of the Korbel School faculty but must be endorsed by a member of the Sié Center team. During the term of their appointment, Practitioners-in-Residence typically receive a stipend, travel and lodging allotment, access to the University facilities, office space, and the opportunity to meet and work with students and faculty.  

IGLI Practitioners-in-Residence

Carolina Barrero is a Cuban human rights advocate and democracy activist for the end of violence and authoritarianism, for peace and respect of civil and political rights. She took part in the protest movement that challenged Cuba's totalitarian regime in 2021 as a member of 27N and San Isidro Movement. She was consequently detained, prosecuted and arrested until she was finally forced into exile in February 2022. She has been invited as speaker in events such as the Oslo Freedom Forum, College Freedom Forum, Human Rights Watch Annual Council and World Liberty Congress. From exile she continues to advocate for freedom in Cuba and to support activists inside the island. She is an author in magazines and newspapers such as Artishock, The Art Newspaper, El Estornudo, Rialta and Hypermedia Magazine. 

 

Choman Hardi s an educator, poet, and scholar known for pioneering work on issues of gender and education in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and beyond. After 26 years of exile, she returned home in 2014 to teach English and initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS), where she also served as English department chair in 2015-16. 

She founded the Center for Gender and Development Studies CGDS at AUIS in 2015, developed and taught feminist courses, built a team, fundraised, and conducted and published research. Choman was the driving force behind initiating the first interdisciplinary gender studies minor in Iraq in 2017. She was also keen to make gender studies resources available in Kurdish and Arabic, and, with her team, secured funding from the European Union for it. In 2019, she received support from the UK Global Challenges Research Fund for a research project about masculinity and violence as part of the gender, justice and security hub in partnership with London School of Economics. 

Choman is the author of critically acclaimed books in the fields of poetry, academia, and translation. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, her post-doctoral research, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Routledge, 2011) was named a UK Core Title by the Yankee Book Peddler. Since 2010,  poems from her first English collection, Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004) have been studied by secondary school students as part of their general curriculum in the UK (AQA and Edexel). Her second collection, Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), was given a recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection. In 2017, a selection of her poems was published in Italian. In 2020, Considering the Woman was released in a French translation

A former chairperson of Exiled Writers Ink!, Choman has facilitated creative writing workshops for the School of Oriental and African Studies, The Arvon Foundation, Spread the Word, Shetland Arts, Academi Wales, Southbank Centre, Apples and Snakes, and the British Council. She was Poet-In-Residence at Moniack Mhor Writers Centre in Scotland, Villa Hellebosch in Belgium, Hedgebrook Women Writers’ Retreat in the USA, and The Booth in Shetland. 

 

Farida Bemba Nabourema is a social activist and writer, recently emerging as the unequivocal voice of Togo’s pro-democracy movement. Farida has been a fearless advocate for democracy and human rights in Togo since she was a teenager. Through over 400 articles written on her blog and other sites, Farida denounces corruption, dictatorship and promotes a form of progressive Pan Africanism. In 2014, Farida published a book in French titled “La Pression de oppression” (The Pressure of Oppression) in which she discussed the different forms of oppression that people face throughout Africa and highlighted the need for youth and women to be politically engaged.

 

Former Practitioners-in-Residence & Visiting Scholars