#  Weatherhead Scholars Program 2025–2026 Cohort 

 





June 24, 2025

 

 

 ![Headshots of AY25-26 WSP cohort.](/sites/g/files/omnuum8356/files/2025-08/WSP-press-release-graphic.jpg)

 

## Weatherhead Scholars Program Announces 2025–2026 Cohort

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2025–2026 cohort of the Weatherhead Scholars Program. This year’s cohort includes twenty-eight participants who join the Center as part of a vibrant, interdisciplinary community committed to advancing research on the world’s most urgent challenges.

The Weatherhead Scholars Program welcomes postdoctoral research scholars; tenured or tenure-track visiting faculty in the social sciences; and accomplished practitioners with backgrounds in diplomacy, development, journalism, civil society, and military service. Also joining the community are scholars appointed through the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Identity Politics, who engage fully in the program while remaining connected to their home initiatives. Together, they bring a wealth of experience, regional knowledge, and methodological diversity to Harvard’s international research community.

The 2025–2026 cohort explores the forces shaping today’s global landscape—from power and inequality to identity, conflict, environmental change, and the shifting dynamics of democracy and governance. Through weekly seminars, collaborative research clusters, and engagement with students and faculty across Harvard, scholars explore how deep research and lived experience can inform one another and help shape new responses to global complexity.

This year marks a period of continued growth for the Weatherhead Scholars Program, with an expanded cohort that reflects an even broader range of regional, disciplinary, and intellectual perspectives. We look forward to a year of rich exchange, fresh insight, and collaboration with this exceptional group of scholars:

**Salam Alsaadi** (Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. He focuses on authoritarianism and contentious politics in divided societies, with a regional emphasis on the Middle East and North Africa. His work has appeared in *American Political Science Review* and *Comparative Politics*. His current book project examines the survival and governance strategies of minority-dominated regimes.

**Gal Bitton** (Postdoctoral Fellow) is an Azrieli Fellow and holds a PhD in political science from Tel Aviv University. Her research integrates experimental and data-driven approaches to study international political economy, with a focus on financial decision-making, cultural finance, and voter attitudes toward redistribution. Her broader interests include political behavior, biases, and the interplay between macro-level policy and micro-level individual choices.

**Dominik Maksymilian Bartmanski** (Visiting Scholar) is a cultural sociologist at Humboldt University in Berlin whose research explores questions of unequal recognition in science and the spatial dimensions of human well-being.

**Lina Benabdallah** (Visiting Scholar) is the McCulloch Family Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. She is the author of *Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations*. Her work has appeared in *International Studies Quarterly*, *African Affairs*, and other major journals.

**Ditmir Bushati** (Practitioner Fellow) is the former Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania and a former member of parliament. He has led OSCE-ODIHR election observation missions and consults on various international projects. He also hosts the *Public Square* podcast, offering analysis on developments in southeast Europe and beyond.

**Gianluca Busilacchi** (Visiting Scholar) is an associate professor of economic sociology at the University of Macerata (Italy) and a fellow at the European University Institute. His research focuses on social policy, poverty, and healthcare, with publications in *Social Indicators Research* and *Social Policy and Administration*.

**Michal Chabros** (Practitioner Fellow) is a career diplomat with eighteen years of experience in international relations. He has served in Cairo, Astana, Minsk, and Moscow, and focuses on political strategy, Russia, the Middle East, and global history.

**Meera Choi** (Sang-Kee Kim Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in sociology from Yale University. Her research explores gender, sexuality, social movements, and media, with a focus on the 4B Movement in South Korea. Her work has been featured in *The Atlantic*, NPR, and CNN.

**Marc Dorpema** (Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in history from New York University and is a historian of capitalism and the environment. His book project explores the political economy of US and European environmental policy. His work has appeared in *Rethinking History* and *Europe-Asia Studies*.

**Peter Habib** (Moulay Hicham Alaoui Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Emory University. His work explores the entanglement of water politics and refugee life in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. His second project focuses on Maronite monasticism and Christian nationalism in Lebanon’s Qadisha Valley.

**Karin Alexandra Heissler** (Practitioner Fellow) holds a PhD in international development from the University of Oxford and is UNICEF’s regional adviser for child protection in West and Central Africa, where she leads strategy and partnerships across twenty-four countries. She specializes in applied, policy-oriented research.

**Ekrem Karakoç** (Visiting Scholar) is a professor of political science at Binghamton University (SUNY). His research focuses on ethnic and religious minorities and the rise of religious nationalism in the Middle East and North Africa.

**Leela Khanna** (Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in anthropology from New York University. Her ethnographic research explores youth engagement with Hindu nationalist politics in western India. Her work investigates how identity, inequality, and inclusion are reshaped within right-wing movements.

**Marko Kljajić** (Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Cluster on Identity Politics) holds a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He studies polarization and reconciliation in postconflict societies, focusing on collective victimhood and acknowledgment as pathways to peace.

**Joseph Lasky** (Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in political science from Cornell University. He studies conflict legacies and political identity in Cameroon. His book project examines how different forms of violence shape divergent social and political outcomes using interviews, surveys, and archival sources.

**Wan-Zi Lu** (Visiting Scholar) is an assistant professor of sociology at SUNY Stony Brook. Her book project compares organ donation policies in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, focusing on institutional culture and political delivery.

**Gülce Şafak Özdemir** (Postdoctoral Fellow) is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow and holds a PhD in sociology from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She studies migration, urban governance, and the politics of (in)visibility in European cities. Gülce also serves on the Executive Committee of the Council for European Studies, co-chairing its Immigration Research Network.

**Deepika Padmanabhan** (Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in political science from Yale University and additional degrees from St. Xavier’s College, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University. She studies nationalism, language, and self-determination in South Asia.

**Pepi Pandiloski** (Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Cluster on Identity Politics) holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. He is a political economist focusing on identity, culture, and social networks in Macedonia.

**Nicholas Redenius** (Practitioner Fellow) is a US Air Force officer and C-130 pilot with over 750 combat hours. He has served in multiple leadership roles over two decades, including command in deployed environments.

**Luis Carlos Ugalde Ramirez** (Practitioner Fellow) is the director of Integralia Consultores and former president of Mexico’s National Electoral Institute. He has taught at Harvard, Georgetown, and Columbia, where he earned his PhD in political science.

**Neha Sanghrajka** (Practitioner Fellow) is a mediator and negotiator who helped broker Mozambique’s 2019 Maputo Accord. A senior conflict sensitivity advisor at UNOPS, she serves on the boards of the Kofi Annan and Berghof Foundations and coauthored *Back from the Brink*, a report on the Kenyan peace process.

**Gangzheng She** (Visiting Scholar) is an associate professor at Tsinghua University and director of the Center for Overseas Security. He studies the Middle East with a focus on great power involvement and China’s foreign policy.

**Senthil Nathan Subash** (Practitioner Fellow) is CEO of Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand and a leader in ethical, sustainable supply chains. He hosts the *Business & Society* podcast and holds degrees from Columbia University.

**Jutha Supholdhavanij** (Practitioner Fellow) is a policy analyst at Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources. His research focuses on environmental justice and conflict resolution in coastal communities. He holds a PhD in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

**Laura Tanguay** (Postdoctoral Fellow) holds a PhD in environmental studies from York University. She studies environmental and socio-legal issues related to Indigenous rights and nuclear energy in Canada. Her work bridges environmental justice, law reform, and Indigenous legal systems.

**Ifrah Wali** (Practitioner Fellow) is Pakistan’s first female South Asian gold medalist in skiing and serves as vice president of the Gilgit Baltistan Winter Sports Association. She promotes sustainable tourism and youth engagement in winter sports.

**Abai Zurdinov** (Practitioner Fellow) is an associate professor at the Diplomatic Academy of Kyrgyzstan. He researches democratic institutions and legal reform in Central Asia and advises on international law and governance. He holds a PhD in legal sciences, awarded by the Higher Attestation Commission under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic.



 

 

 



 

 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)