# Weatherhead Scholars Program 2024–2025 Cohort June 26, 2024 The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is pleased to announce the 2024–2025 scholars and fellows of the Weatherhead Scholars Program (WSP). This year's cohort comprises twenty members, including six postdoctoral fellows, five visiting scholars, and nine practitioner fellows. They represent diverse regions and disciplines, featuring peace and conflict specialists, career diplomats and public servants, and affiliates with a range of methodological approaches who work on a broad number of topics including human rights, humanitarian emergencies, political economy, democracy and governance, social welfare policies, and many others. Scholars and fellows spend up to one year at Harvard conducting historical or contemporary international, transnational, global, and comparative research, including policy analysis. The Scholars Program welcomed its first class of participants in 2017–2018, when visiting faculty and postdoctoral researchers joined practitioners in this successor to the long-running Fellows Program, established in 1958. During their residency, they contribute to the intellectual activities of the Weatherhead Center and the broader Harvard community by participating in seminars and workshops, collaborating with research clusters, auditing courses, and working with undergraduate research assistants. **Judith Abitan**, Fellow, is the executive director of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. As an international human rights advocate, Judith is committed to the pursuit of justice, the promotion and protection of human rights, and the betterment of the human condition. **Mustapha Alhassan**, Fellow (Fall 2024), is a consultant with the United Nations Development Program in Nigeria. Mustapha’s research focuses on Indigenous knowledge systems and their contributions to peacebuilding in Nigeria. **Evren Balta**, Visiting Scholar, is a professor of political science at Özyeğin University in Istanbul. Evren’s research spans comparative and international politics with a focus on internal conflicts, Turkish foreign policy, populism, and citizenship. She is the author of several books, including *The American Passport in Turkey*, which received the American Sociological Association’s Best Book by an International Scholar Award. **Santiago Creuheras**, Fellow, is a professor of management at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Previously, he served as deputy minister of energy and sustainability in Mexico. Santiago’s research looks at the effectiveness of negotiations, implementations, and impact of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Group of 20. **Dawn Doak**, Fellow, is a supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Covert Operations Section, as well as a member of the Behavioral Analysis Program. Dawn's work encompasses investigations into malign foreign influence, transnational repression, economic espionage, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and state-sponsored cyber intrusions. **Evan Fernández**, Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow, is a historian of modern Latin America with a focus on international relations, political economy, and development in Chile and the Pacific. **John Starosta Galante**, Visiting Scholar, is an associate professor of history and global studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he cofounded and codirects the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. John is the author of *On the Other Shore: The Atlantic Worlds of Italians in South America during the Great War* and is currently working on a project investigating meanings of “Latinness” in comparative historical perspective. **Ada González-Torres**, Visiting Scholar, is an assistant professor/lecturer of economics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Ada’s main fields of interest are development economics and political economy, focusing on the role of norms, coordination in beliefs and behavior, and institutional environments in affecting development outcomes. **Weirong Guo**, Postdoctoral Fellow, is a cultural and political sociologist who studies global China and Chinese diasporas. Weirong’s research centers on Chinese student migrants in the United States, focusing on their shifting political attitudes, sense of self, racial identity, and mental health challenges. **Oded Haklai**, Visiting Scholar, is a professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, where he is also director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy. Oded is interested in national and ethnic conflict, state-minority relations, settlers and territorial disputes, Palestinian-Israeli relations, and Israeli politics. He is completing a book manuscript on his current project on population settlements and territorial control in the post-WWII era. **Brendan Hopkins**, Fellow (Fall 2024), is a colonel in the United States Air Force. Brendan’s work examines the role of the United States in supporting United Nations peacekeeping missions. **Sora Lim,** Sang-Kee Kim Fellow, is a journalist with the Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company in South Korea. Sora, formerly the vice president of the Journalists Association of Korea, is passionate about addressing political polarization and advocating for the freedom of the press. **Jaehyun Nam,** Sang-Kee Kim Visiting Scholar, is an associate professor of social welfare at Pusan National University in South Korea. Jaehyun’s work focuses on social welfare policies and programs aimed at reducing poverty and income inequality, and how these reductions translate into improvements in socioeconomic outcomes, including education, health, income, and family relationships. **Daphnee Ouellet**, Fellow, is a member of the Refugee Appeal Division at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Daphnee is an expert in refugee and immigration issues and has worked on various humanitarian emergencies, supporting refugee status determination, statelessness initiatives, and resettlement processing. **Elizabeth Parker-Magyar**, Hicham Alaoui Postdoctoral Fellow, is a scholar of contentious politics and political economy in the contemporary Middle East. Her research combines immersive qualitative research with analysis of original network, survey, and geospatial data. **Denisa Sarajlic**, Fellow (Spring 2025), is the director of SKRIPTA, a women-led consultancy based in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Denisa has expertise in democratization, public policy, governance, citizen participation, and public administration reform. She is currently working on a book about the European Union as an external democratizer and the role of divisive narratives in subverting successful democratization. **Natán Skigin**, Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow, is a researcher on migration, conflict, human rights, and democratic citizenship, examining how social identities shape political behavior in violent, unequal societies. He studies how the political voices of marginalized groups affect intergroup discrimination and democratic accountability in Latin America. **Laura Thompson**, Raphael Morrison Dorman Postdoctoral Fellow, is an anthropologist of religion specializing in Islam in North Africa. She is interested in the study of blasphemy and hate speech, as well as comedy and curses, in the Mediterranean region, and how arguments about emotion can support claim making. **Peter Vale**, Postdoctoral Fellow, is a historian of capitalism, state-making, and the environment in Africa. His current research project, "The Copper Eaters: Inventing Capitalism in Central Africa," explores why, despite persistent economic decline and devastating socioecological consequences, Congolese (DRC) workers, residents, and officials maintain a deep attachment to corporate enterprise and private capital in the country’s mining sector. **Krzysztof Wąsowski**, Fellow (Fall 2024), is a career diplomat at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Krzysztof leads a research team focused on think tanks and academic outreach and is interested in security policy, particularly nuclear weapons policy. Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)