The Open Society Fellowship Program is pleased to announce the selection of seven new fellows, who will begin their fellowship terms in 2012. They are:
Asef Bayat
Understanding Social (Non)Movements: Unconventional Activism, Citizenship, and the Arab Uprisings
Bayat will study unconventional forms of activism “from below,” which he believes played a major role in bringing about the Arab uprisings. He asks whether international donors and policymakers tend to favor civil society organizations, which often represent powerful constituencies and are marked by significant disparities of class and status, at the expense of grassroots groupings that may be more representative of popular interests. He is a professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is the author or editor of ten books, including Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (2010).
John Feffer
The Class of ’89: Lessons from the Eastern European Transitions
The collapse of the Soviet empire two decades ago was greeted as the ultimate triumph of liberal values. Since then, however, countries of the former Soviet bloc have compiled, at best, mixed records of protecting human rights and promoting tolerance. Feffer will interview dozens of leading thinkers, activists, and writers in Eastern Europe–many of whom he spoke to while the transitions were underway—to gauge lessons that may applicable to other societies experiencing similar transformations. He expects to write a series of essays for policy makers, a book of narrative nonfiction, and a one-man theater piece dramatizing the stories he uncovers during his research. He is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute of Policy Studies, and former associate editor of World Policy Journal.
Vanda Felbab-Brown
Managing Illicit Economies: Law Enforcement, Security, and Human Rights
Felbab-Brown will research seven different illicit economies—including the drug trade, maritime piracy, the smuggling of gems, illicit logging, and the illegal trade in wildlife—to determine how best to understand and manage them in ways that enhance human security and human rights. She argues that current efforts to contain illicit economies, which center on law-enforcement strategies—such as suppression, interdiction, and border control—have thus far not significantly reduced many of the illicit flows they target. She is a Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mark Gevisser
The Sexuality Frontier: LGBT Rights in Global Perspective
The rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and intersexed people define the frontier of human rights discourse today, Gevisser says, much as movements for women’s rights and civil rights did in a previous era. But the LGBT movement is playing out against the backdrop of globalization, which has radically transformed how we understand such concepts as individuality and family, behavior and identity, and tradition and modernity. He will study a rights landscape profoundly changed by transnational flows of capital, commodities, people and information. An author and journalist who writes about South Africa, Gevisser received the Alan Paton prize for his 2008 book Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred.
Suki Kim
North Korea: The Economics of Defection
A novelist and journalist, Kim will study defection from North Korea as a multi-million dollar enterprise, directly affecting not only those individuals involved, but also the broader political environment of North Korea and its neighboring countries. Her objective is to tell the stories of individual defectors and examine the macroeconomic effects of defection on the domestic economies of North Korea’s neighbors, with a particular focus on the impact on China’s labor market. Kim, who spent most of the past year living in Pyongyang, is the author of The Interpreter, a novel, and New York Stories, a collection of essays.
Sarah Spencer
In the Shadow of the Law: Irregular Migrants and Local Government
Spencer will investigate the provision of essential services to irregular migrants across Europe. Her aim is to identify the economic and social imperatives that lead governments—at the national or local level—to provide access to services, which she believes will strengthen the case for inclusion at a time when these arrangements are increasingly under threat. She will look to the US experience for insights into the contentious politics of this issue. Spencer has been based at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford and is the chair of Britain’s network of human rights and equality non-governmental organizations, the Equality and Diversity Forum.
Martina Vandenberg
Civil Justice: Winning Restitution for Trafficking Victims
Vandenberg will establish a law center called Civil Justice, which will act as a clearing house between pro bono law firms and potential clients who have suffered from human trafficking. The organization will seek to bridge the gap of trust that divides the private bar and anti-trafficking activists by undertaking advocacy with non-governmental organizations, training of law firms, development of internal champions within law firms, and fundraising. Vandenberg is a partner in the Litigation Department of the law firm Jenner and Block and has worked at Human Rights Watch, where she investigated war crimes and other abuses. She is the recipient of the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Pro Bono Award for her work representing trafficking victims and advocacy around the issue.