Meridith LaVelle

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). I also have my M.A. in Political Science and International Affairs, A.B. in International Affairs, and B.A. in German language. My primary research interests center on human rights, international human rights law, political violence, contentious politics, political economy, and quantitative methodology. In 2019, I began working with the Human Rights Measurement Initiative as a member of the Civil and Political Rights (CPR) team. As a member of the CPR team, I assist with survey development, processing of qualitative data, and producing the quantitative measures for each country in our survey sample. Additionally, I am assisting in the development of a new way for our team to measure the right to be free from the death penalty. I am also the director of the GLOBIS Human Rights Research Lab, which is part of SPIA's Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia.