Indian American named Director of Human Rights Center at Christopher Newport University

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Indian American Dr. Suparna Chaudhry has been named the new director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University’s Reiff Center, where she also serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science.

As the director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Chaudhry will implement a threefold mission.

The center will organize conferences and public events addressing international concerns, the Reiff Center will organize professional development workshops for students interested in careers within human rights and social justice and that will help establish the Reiff Center as a data hub for national policymakers, which will require IT-focused interns who can translate data into an easily accessible form, according to a university press release.

“I am broadly interested in issues related to human rights and conflict. My research is on state repression of civil society – when governments start feeling threatened by civil society groups, what tactics they use to crack down on these groups and how governments learn these authoritarian tactics from one another. Being part of a center that’s more public facing and being close to Washington, D.C., are ideal for communicating your research – not just to the public, but also to the policymakers,” Chaudhry is quoted saying in a press release.

Chaudhry earned her doctorate in political science at Yale University and was previously a post-doctoral fellow in U.S. foreign policy and international security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.