Guest researcher: Betel Birhanu

Betel Birhanu completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, with a doctoral thesis titled “Transnational Human Rights Pressure at Critical Political Junctures and the Behavior of Strategically Important, Yet ‘Vulnerable,’ Target States: Insights from the Horn and East Africa.”

Previously, Betel was a Visiting Researcher at the University College London (UCL) in 2018. In 2017 and 2015, she received the Civil Society Scholars Awards from Open Society Foundations. She was also a MILEAD fellow in 2015. Furthermore, she worked as a Rights and Policy Portfolio lead at Includovate, and a lecturer at Addis Ababa University and Adama University, in Ethiopia.

Betel’s research interests include human rights, civic space, social movements, transnational relations, and gender equality with a geographic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, she is working on a Vinnova funded research project that examines the shrinking of civic space and youth-led social movements in the Horn and East Africa.

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