The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Announces Its 2023 Emerging Scholars

July 13, 2023

(NEW YORK) — The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation today announced the selection of its 2023 HFG Emerging Scholars. These nine doctoral candidates—chosen through a rigorous multistage evaluation process—are working to advance knowledge on the nature of and responses to violence around the world. 

The scholars are completing dissertations on a range of vital topics including organized crime in Latin America and the often counterproductive efforts to stem it; national differences in refugee policy; persecution of Muslims in Myanmar; gender policies of insurgencies regarding their own members and civilians; and the education of US police to dispel mistaken beliefs about rape.

FIRST ROW: TESSA EVANS, ELDAD LEVY GUERRERO, TAUHID BIN KASHEM; SECOND ROW: ISABEL LATERZO, ANA PAULA PELLEGRINO, BRITNI MOORE; THIRD ROW: APEKSHYA PRASAI, MATTHEW SCHISSLER, NATÁN SKIGIN.

“HFG’s latest cohort of Emerging Scholars is addressing topics both intellectually fascinating and profoundly relevant to humanitarian concern,” said HFG’s Director of Research Joel Wallman. “These awardees are studying disparate problems in varied places, but all are important and appropriate ones for a foundation dedicated to the understanding and reduction of violence.”

The awards are given to promising researchers in their final year of writing a doctoral dissertation that examines a salient aspect of violence. In selecting the awardees, HFG prioritizes research that addresses urgent, contemporary problems.


2023 Scholars and Research Topics

Tessa Devereaux Evans (Cornell University). To Have and to Hold: The Determinants of Insurgent Gender Governance 

Eldad Levy Guerrero (University of Texas at Austin). Making a Market for Security: Private Security Entrepreneurship in Mexico City 

Tauhid bin Kashem (University of California, Irvine). Violence and Protection at the Borders of the Refugee Regime: Refugee Response in South and Southeast Asia 

Isabel Laterzo (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The Politics of Public Security: An Analysis of Campaigns and Policy in Brazilian States

Britni Moore (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Police Recruits and the Discursive Construction of Rape in Sexual Assault Training 

Ana Paula Pellegrino (Georgetown University). The State That Forges Armed Criminal Groups

Apekshya Prasai (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Gendered Processes of Rebellion: Understanding Strategies for Organizing Violence

Matthew Schissler (University of Michigan). Cultivating Islamophobia: Fear, Revulsion, and a Buddhist Movement Against Muslims in Myanmar

Natán Skigin (University of Notre Dame). Punitive Solidarity in Drug Wars: How Human Rights Campaigns Shape Prosocial Behavior and Criminal Justice Preferences

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression.

For more information contact:

Nyeleti Honwana, Program Officer

info@hfg.org | 646.428.0971

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