David L. Richards is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, with appointments in both the Department of Political Science and the Human Rights Institute, where he is Director of Graduate Studies. His published body of work on human rights includes studies of gender-violence law, US public support for torture, and the measurement of government respect for human rights, among other things. He has also authored reports for governments and international organizations.
Contact: https://polisci.uconn.edu/person/david-richards/
Susan Randolph is Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) where she also served as a faculty affiliate of the Human Rights Institute (HRI) and was Co-Director of the Economic and Social Rights Research Group. Dr. Randolph is the Co-founder and Economic and Social Rights Lead of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, HRMI, (humanrightsmeasurement.org and rightstracker.org), and Co-founder and Co-Director of the Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment (SERF) Index project (serfindex.org).
She has served as a short-term consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. Dr. Randolph’s research has focused on a broad range of issues in development economics, including poverty, inequality, food security, and economic rights, at both the country and regional levels and has been published in numerous refereed multidisciplinary as well as economic journals. One stream of her work has emphasized measurement while other streams have emphasized development policy. Her work on measurement has focused on economic and social rights. Her book describing this approach, Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights with Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Terra Lawson-Remer (Oxford University Press, 2015), won the 2016 Best Book of the Year award from the American Political Science Association’s Human Rights Section, and the three authors were awarded the 2019 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Her work on marginal malnutrition and food security has focused on Mexico and Senegal, while her other work on development policy has been focused cross-nationally as well as on Malaysia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Egypt, Nepal, and Indonesia. Dr. Randolph received her BA in Political Science from the University of Oregon and her MA and Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.
Contact: https://econ.uconn.edu/person/susan-randolph/
Daniel Arnon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona and is a principal researcher for the Political Terror Scale, an index of state violations of physical integrity rights. He received his Ph.D. in 2021 from Emory University.
Dr. Arnon’s research focuses on conflict processes between individuals and the state, including individual violence against the state, namely terrorism and insurgency, and state violence against individuals, namely human rights violations and repression. His recent research focuses on the sources of lone actor political violence and its political consequences, the politicization of and biases in measuring human rights violations, how identity politics shapes tolerance for repression, and the dynamics of social cohesion and state repression, particularly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His work has appeared in International Security, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Human Rights, and Conflict Management and Peace Science. In addition to his PhD from Emory University, Dr. Arnon also holds a M.Sc. (2015) from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina Asheville.
Outside the classroom and the office, Dr. Arnon enjoys outdoor activities including rock climbing, gardening, biking, running, swimming, and snowboarding.
Jennifer Barnes is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and earned her B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina – Asheville in 2019. Her research focuses on the measurement of human rights and how agency and the process of delegation influence policies of repression and the perpetration of abuses by state agents. She is a research assistant for the Political Terror Scale (PTS) and a principal researcher for the Societal Violence Scale (SVS).
Michael Rubin is an Asst. Research Professor in the Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut and Director of the Human Rights Research and Data (HuRRD) Hub. His research investigates armed conflict processes and political violence, with a focus on rebel groups’ territorial control and governance, the use of terrorism in resistance campaigns, conflict-related forced displacement, and the role that civilians play in shaping armed conflict. Michael earned a Ph.D. (2018) in Political Science from Columbia University, specializing in International Relations and Comparative Politics, and a B.A. (2010) from Emory University. Prior to joining UConn, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Baekkwan Park is an Associate Professor in the Truman School of Government & Public Affairs and the Institute for Data Science & Informatics. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Emory University. His research focuses on human rights, international relations, and research methods.
Meridith LaVelle is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and International Affairs and the Director of the GLOBIS Human Rights Research Lab at the University of Georgia. She is also a member of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative’s (HRMI) Civil and Political Rights team. Her research interests include human rights, international human rights law, political violence, contentious politics, political economy, and quantitative methodology.
Matthew Rains is the Civil and Political Rights Lead for the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI). Matthew is dedicated to using research for advancing and improving human rights conditions globally, through the creation of data and empowerment of human rights advocates. He is a political scientist who has spent years with human rights measurement projects, including multiple years as a member of HRMI’s CPR team prior to his appointment as Lead. His research agenda focuses on discrimination and oppression against marginalized people, political violence/civil conflict, and tackling difficult measurement problems in political science. Matthew is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia.