CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School announced today that five international student researchers will compromise the inaugural cohort of Topol Research Fellows. The students will be trained in finding nonviolent solutions to political conflict. The Topol Research Fellows program seeks to create a new generation of experts in nonviolence and diplomacy, who will eventually take on leadership roles in governments and non-governmental organizations.
“The Topol Fellows bring a wide range of knowledge and experience in the fields of nonviolence and organizing and will bring a powerful new lens to our human rights research at Carr,” said Mathias Risse, faculty director of the Carr Center.
Topol fellows will attend a series of trainings with Professor Erica Chenoweth, whose research and work focuses on political violence and its alternatives. Foreign Policy magazine ranked her among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2013 for her efforts to promote the empirical study of civil resistance.
The 2019 Topol Fellows and their areas of research are:
• Amanat Boparai - Women's role in nonviolent solutions to conflict
• Víctor Pérez García - Peaceful and nonviolent solutions to Catalonian conflict
• Rahaf Safi - Nonviolent movements and violent conflicts in the Middle East
• Preeti Sahai - Nonviolent solutions to communal polarization in India
• Sofia Salas - Nonviolent solutions to polarization in Colombia
The Topol Research Fellows program is made possible by the support of entrepreneur, philanthropist, and peace activist Sidney Topol and the Topol Family Foundation. The Topol Family Fund has donated more than $1 million for fellowships and teaching at 10 institutions in the United States and Israel, supporting training in diplomacy and nonviolent conflict resolution for aspiring members of the diplomatic corps and non-governmental organizations.
About the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Since its founding in 1999 the Carr Center has developed a unique focus of expertise on the most dangerous and intractable human rights challenges of the new century, including genocide, mass atrocity, state failure, and the ethics and politics of military intervention. The Carr Center's mission is to realize global justice through theory, policy, and practice. The Center brings together theorists, policymakers, and practitioners in a vital mission: to enhance global justice. We accomplish this though research, teaching, training, and convenings focused on a more strategic and outcome-oriented human rights practice. For more information on the Carr Center’s fellowship program, including a full list of former fellows, visit: www.carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu
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