Erica Chenoweth

Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. They study mass movements, nonviolent resistance, political violence, state repression, and democracy. They are particularly interested in how people effectively resist authoritarianism and push for systemic change, and in using social science tools and evidence to support pro-democracy movements. 

At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation, including by maintaining one of the world’s leading international datasets on mass mobilization.  

Chenoweth's recent book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. An earlier book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict with Maria J. Stephan, won the 2012 best book award from the American Political Science Association. 

Chenoweth is a recipient of the Karl Deutsch Award, which the International Studies Association gives annually to the scholar under 40 who has made the greatest impact on the field of international politics or peace research.