The Binghamton University Human Rights Institute (HRI) advances research, teaching and community engagement in human rights. We bring a transdisciplinary human rights perspective to important social problems and contribute to evidence-based policymaking as well as critical discourses in human rights. Drawing upon Binghamton University's research excellence and New York state's rich history advocating and advancing human rights, HRI advances scholarship and develops rights-based initiatives to impact public policy, scholarship, and teaching in New York state, the United States and internationally.
Leadership
David L. Cingranelli, Co-Director
Professor of Political Science
Offices: LN-G100 and LN-G56
davidc@binghamton.edu
David Cingranelli is a Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University, SUNY. He and his students developed some of the earliest quantitative measures of national human rights practices. He has written widely on human rights, democracy, and governance. His 2007 book with Rodwan Abouharb, Human Rights and Structural Adjustment, (Cambridge University Press) demonstrated the negative human rights impacts of World Bank and IMF program lending in developing countries. He is a former President of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association. Until 2012, he served as the co-director of the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project, the largest and most widely used human rights data set in the world. Presently, he and his colleague, Mikhail Filippov, are working in collaboration on a successor to the CIRI project, which is called the "CI-RIGHTS" data project. The CI-Rights dataset (1981-2015) is now available for download from this website. Along with Colin Barry and Chad Clay, he also created a new data providing numerical scores for eight worker rights (1994-2010). This WorkR dataset is also available for download from this website.
Alexandra S. Moore, Co-Director
Professor of English, General Literature and Rhetoric
Offices: LN-G100 and LN-G29
amoore@binghamton.edu
Alexandra Moore’s publications include Vulnerability and Security in Human Rights Literature and Visual Culture (2015) and Regenerative Fictions: Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis, and the Nation as Family (2004). She has also co-edited several volumes: Writing Beyond the State: Post-Sovereign Approaches to Human Rights in Literary Studies (with Samantha Pinto, 2020); Witnessing Torture: Perspectives of Torture Survivors and Human Rights Workers (with Swanson, 2018) The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (with Sophia A. McClennen, 2015); Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies (with Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, 2015); Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities (with Sunka Simon, 2015); and Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature (with Goldberg, 2011). Her current research focuses on human rights violations in the ongoing War on Terror. She also has an edited collection, Technologies of Human Rights Representations (with James Dawes), forthcoming. Moore is the Editor of the Human Rights Series at SUNY Press as well as the Studies in Literature, Culture, and Human Rights Series at Palgrave.
External Advisory Board
Amy Hyatt (‘78)
Ambassador to Palau 2015-2020, U.S. Department of State
Aaron Mair (‘84, Honorary Doctorate ‘18)
Director of “Forever Adirondacks” campaign, Adirondack Council,
former president of the Sierra Club
Eric Schwartz (‘79)
Former president of Refugees International, former Assistant Sec of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration
Joseph R. Slaughter
Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University
Sunita Toor
Professor and Head of Human Rights, Division of Law and Criminology and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University
Advisory board
Serdar Atav
Professor of Public Health and Nursing
Serdar A. Atav is a professor of health policy and research at Binghamton University. His research focuses on health promotion and disease prevention in the context of public health policy as it relates to vulnerable populations. His publications, presentations, grants, consulting efforts and other community oriented projects reflect his attention to vulnerable populations and his strengths in policy, quantitative methods, evaluation and data analysis. In 2003, he received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals including recent articles in Nursing Education Today and the Journal of Aging Research. He is a faculty leader of the Binghamton University Working Group on Poverty and Inequality.
Elisa Camiscioli
Associate Professor of History; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS)
Elisa Camiscioli is a historian of migration with a focus on modern France. She is
the author of Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth
Century (Duke University Press, 2009), as well as several articles and book chapters on gender
and race in European and global debates on immigration and colonialism. Her current
work explores trafficking, travel and illicit migration in the modern French Atlantic
world. She is also the co-editor of the Journal of Women's History.
John Cheng
Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies
John Cheng is a historian of modern America and the history of science and technology.
His book, Astounding Wonder (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), explores the
emergence of science fiction as a popular cultural genre in interwar America and its
relationship to popular science, and was selected by Locus Magazine for its 2012 Recommended
Reading list. He is currently working on two new inter-related projects: Unnatural
Citizens examines racial denaturalization and expatriation and their consequences
for Asian Americans and the racial character of 20th-century American citizenship.
Barred Zones considers the geographic implications of racial modernity, exploring
the inter-relationships between technology, territory, law and race for the United
States and other emergent nation-states in the turn of the 20th-century's age of empire.
Cheng also contributed to the documentary series Race: The Power of an Illusion (California Newsreel, 2003), holds a patent from youthful summers as a research intern and before coming to Binghamton, was involved with a number of Asian American community organizations in the Washington, D.C., and Chicago metro areas.
Suzy Lee
Assistant Professor of Human Development
Suzy Lee is a sociologist and legal scholar whose work focuses on international labor
migration, the transformations in migration law and policy in the neoliberal era and
the implication of migration policy for the protection of migrants’ rights. Her primary
line of research examines the development of sending state policy regimes, with a
focus on the Philippine’s contract migration program. Other projects include studies
on immigrants’ access to public and legal services in the U.S., service provision
to survivors of trafficking in developing countries, the effect of neoliberal economic
policy and migration regimes.
Affiliated faculty and staff
We welcome new affiliates. If you’re interested in getting involved, fill out this affiliate interest form.
- Marta Agüero Guerra, Romance Languages and Literatures
- Amir Ahmadi Arian, English
- Anne Bailey, History
- Barrett Brenton, Center for Civic Engagement
- Kanisha Bond, Political Science
- Gabriela Buitrón Vera, Romance Languages and Literatures
- Tina Chang, English, General Literature and Rhetoric
- Rosemary Collier, Nursing
- Robert DeBoard, Judaic Studies
- Sidney Dement, German and Russian Studies
- Shahab Derhami, School of Management
- Elizabeth DiGangi, Anthropology
- Jodi Dowthwaite, Master of Public Health Program
- Deborah Elliston, Anthropology
- Jakob Feinig, Human Development
- Mikhail Filippov, Political Science
- Divya Gupta, Environmental Studies
- Nicole Hassoun, Philosophy
- Laura Hill, Human Development
- Michael Jacobson, Office of Strategic Research Initiatives
- Vanessa Cañete Jurado, Romance Languages and Literatures
- Kristina Lambright, CCPA Dean's Office & Public Administration
- Kate Martineau, Asian and Asian American Studies
- Miesha Marzell, Social Work
- Loretta Mason-Williams, Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership
- Saeideh Mirghorbani, School of Management
- Sarah Nance, Art and Design
- Lubna Omar, Anthropology
- Sabina Perrino, Anthropology and Linguistics
- Kathleen Provinzano, Social Work and Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership
- Birgit Brander Rasmussen, English
- Anthony Reeves, Philosophy
- Kent Schull, History
- Stacey Shipe, Social Work
- Olga Shvetsova, Political Science
- Anne-Caroline Sieffert, Romance Languages and Literatures
- Kaitlyn Sorenson, Comparative Literature
- Diren Valayden, Human Development
- Marguerite Wilson, Human Development
- Leo Wilton, Human Development
- Susan Wolcott Hanes, Economics
- Wan Yu, Geography
- Denise Yull, Human Development
- Lisa Yun, English
External faculty affiliates
- Vanessa Farr, Law and Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University
- Hanna Musiol, Modern and Contemporary Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Belinda Walzer, English and Rhetoric, Appalachian State University
