Since 1988, USIP has awarded 408 non-residential fellowships to doctoral candidates enrolled in U.S. universities, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in research, teaching, and policymaking. Since 2017, USIP has partnered with the Minerva Research Initiative to build upon the successes of the Peace Scholar program.

USIP-Funded Peace Scholar Fellows:

• Alana Ackerman (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Refugees without Refuge: Persecution and Displacement across Borders in South America.”
• Shahab ud Din Ahmad (John Hopkins University), “Conflict and Late State Formation in Colonial Peripheries: Discretionary Rule and Informality on the Afghan Frontier (1955 -2018).”
• Amanda Blewitt (New York University), “‘Living Peace’ in a Violent Environment: Local and Everyday Peacebuilding in Honduras.”
• Frieder Dengler (American University), “System Encounters: Rules of Inter-State Conduct in Early Modern Sino-European Relations.”
• Sky Kunkel (Purdue University, non-stipendiary), “The Local Effects of UN Peacekeeping.”
• Laura Mendez Carvajal (Kent State University), “‘Self-help’ discourse in foreign aid and inequality: peasants' agency in rural Colombia.”
• Rebecca Wai (University of Michigan), “It takes more than a village: How refugee-host cooperation promotes peace and economic development.”

Minerva-Funded Peace and Security Scholars

• Haley Allen DeMarco (Yale University), “Staffing the Secret Police: Security Personnel in Authoritarian Argentina.”
• Salah Ben Hammou (University of Central Florida), “The Varieties of Civilian Praetorianism and The Politics of Post-Coup Trajectories.”
• Tessa Devereaux Evans (Cornell University), “More of a Threat than Guns: The Determinants of Insurgent Gender Governance.”
• Myung Jung Kim (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), “Negotiating Justice, Rebel Sponsorship and War Outcomes in the Shadow of International Criminal Prosecution.”
• Enrico Antonio La Viña (University of California, Davis),“Vigilantism from Above: Democratic Backsliding and State Repression in the Philippines.”
• Emily Myers (Duke University),“Rethinking Rebel-Civilian Ties in Civil War.”
• Miryam Nacimento (City University of New York, The Graduate Center), “Coca Growers and Peasant Cultures: Explaining the Impact of Coca Prohibition on Peasant Identities in Colombia.”
• Ilayda Onder (The Pennsylvania State University), “Cooperation, Rivalry, and Tactical Diffusion in Militant Networks.”
• Ana Paula Pellegrino (Georgetown University), “The State that Forges Organized Criminal Groups.”
• Beenish Pervaiz (Brown University), “Old Wars, New Tools: How alliance politics shapes vertical nuclear proliferation and technological diffusion in Pakistan and India.”
• Erika Ricci (University of Central Florida), “The Militancy Cycle: exploring violent extremism through the Italian Red Brigades.”
• Natan Skigin (University of Notre Dame), “Punitive Solidarity: How Victims' Narratives Shape Civic Engagement and Accountability in Drug Wars.”
• Madeleine Stevens (University of Chicago), “Annihilating “Subversion” and Dehumanizing “Delinquents”: Enforced Disappearance from the Cold War through the War on Terror.”
• Angie Torres-Beltran (Cornell University, non-stipendiary), "Three Essays on Gender, Violence, and the State."

USIP congratulates these distinguished scholars for their accomplishments and looks forward to supporting future generations of peacebuilders through our dissertation fellowship program.

The competition for the 2024-25 cohort opens in September 2023. If you or someone you know is interested in applying to the program, visit the Peace Scholar Fellowship Program page on USIP’s website to see the 2024-25 Request for Applications.