Non-Resident Fellows

2026 Non-Resident Fellows

_{Democratic Resistance and Renewal}

Cassandra Emmons
Global Advisor, Democratic Resilience & Data Analytics at International Foundation of Electoral Systems (IFES)

Dr. Cassandra Emmons is the Global Advisor for Democratic Resilience & Data Analytics at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). She founded and now leads IFES’ Data Analytics and Visualization Team, through which she is responsible for ensuring evidence-based approaches in all IFES programming and advancing IFES’ data analytics strategy. She also manages IFES’ external databases, including most notably ElectionGuide, the most comprehensive and timely online resource for election dates and deadlines around the world. Dr. Emmons’s substantive research, including that developed in her role as a Non-Residential Fellow in Democratic Resistance and Renewal at Cornell University’s Center for Global Democracy, focuses on identifying and developing effective deterrents of democratic erosion and interventions to counter autocratic collaboration globally. As lead of IFES’ Democratic Resilience Lab, she directs thought leadership and intervention development that both supports democratic renewal and counters democratic backsliding. She takes a leading role in building academic and institutional partnerships as well as executing the IFES Learning Agenda. Her work has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, PS: Political Science & Politics, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, AJIL Unbound, and Verfassungsblog as well as several book chapters. Dr. Emmons earned her PhD in Politics from Princeton University, an MA in Politics from Princeton University, and a BA in Political Science and English from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Abigail Hall
Associate, Law Firm

Abigail Hall is a J.D. graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. in Political Science, summa cum laude, from Howard University. She currently serves as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where her practice focuses on government investigations, international trade and investment, economic sanctions, and broader regulatory compliance. A proud first-generation American citizen, Ms. Hall is a legal scholar and practitioner with a deep commitment to public service, global politics, and the creation of an equitable world. She brings a unique blend of academic rigor, policy insight, and cross-border experience to the most pressing challenges facing the public and private sectors. At Howard, she completed her undergraduate thesis on how the polarization of American politics influences judicial decision-making. Her academic work took her abroad for research on global governance in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai, and a comparative study in South Africa on systemic inequality and social movements challenging apartheid and American segregation. Elected by the student body, she served on Howard University’s Board of Trustees—its highest governing body—shaping institutional strategy and mission. She also represented the university at official ceremonies alongside national leaders, including U.S. Congressman James Clyburn and President Joseph Biden. At Harvard Law, Ms. Hall completed over 1,000 hours of pro bono service, which included roles at the White House Counsel’s Office and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Her global legal education included field research and human rights work in Ghana, Israel and the West Bank, and on the legacy of Partition in India and Pakistan. Her subject matter expertise includes American politics, foreign policy, public law, international law, comparative constitutional law, human security, and development in the Global South. She has published original legal scholarship and is known for translating complex legal and geopolitical issues into clear, accessible insights for broad audiences. Ms. Hall’s personal story—of breaking barriers as a first-generation American citizen and rising to the heights of legal academia—has been featured in The New York Times, ABC News, and other media outlets. Her journey reflects a bold vision for the future and a lifelong dedication to making a meaningful difference. She is a member of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and often returns to Howard University to serve on various executive leadership committees.

Tess McEnery
Founder and CEO, Smashworks Consulting

Tess McEnery is a democracy and human rights advocate with two decades of leadership across the U.S. government, international nonprofits, and grassroots coalitions. She is the founder of Smashworks Consulting and the board chair of Vote Smart, a storied voter education nonprofit. Ms. McEnery also serves as an election official in Alexandria, Virginia, and co-leads the ICE-Out of Alexandria coalition. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the Middle East Democracy Center and spent 15 years in U.S. government service – including two tours as Director for Democracy and Human Rights at the White House National Security Council, and in senior roles at the State Department and USAID. Grounded in both policymaking and community organizing, Ms. McEnery is passionate about mobilizing people to defend democracy.

Noah Ponton
Senior Manager, Humanity United

Noah Ponton is a Senior Manager at Humanity United, where he manages programs, grantmaking, and strategic partnerships for the foundation’s Forced Labor and Human Trafficking portfolio. In this role, he works closely with civil society actors, including philanthropic partners, NGOs, grassroots activists, and journalists, across Asia, Africa, and the Arab Gulf on issues related to worker power, corporate accountability, and migration. His recent work has included efforts to raise awareness of abuses faced by low-wage migrant workers in Qatar ahead of the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Noah is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Democracy at the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He previously served as a fellow with National Security Action and worked at the National Women’s Law Center, supporting the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. He is an advisory board member of Human Rights First, a nonprofit advancing human rights and the rule of law in the United States and globally. He has also been selected for Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen Cohort and recognized as an Out Leader by New America and Out in National Security. His writing on democracy and human rights has appeared in The Hill and Inkstick Media. Noah holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in political science and Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated as an Honors Carolina Laureate.

Petra Radic
PhD Candidate in Comparative Politics, Central European University (CEU)

Petra Radic is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Politics, with a minor in Social Science Methodology, at Central European University (CEU). Her research focuses on political communication and public opinion dynamics in contexts of democratic erosion, drawing on insights from political psychology and psycholinguistics. Petra’s doctoral research examines how repeated exposure to strategically coordinated political narratives shapes citizens’ attitudes, perceptions of legitimacy, and democratic commitments in hybrid and backsliding regimes. Substantively, her work analyzes how governments consolidate communicative power while maintaining formally pluralist institutions, and how these strategies generate durable cognitive and attitudinal effects among citizens over time. Moving beyond conventional persuasion-based accounts, her work focuses on how repeated and familiar political language becomes cognitively internalized, generating durable interpretive biases that shape political attitudes and democratic commitments. Methodologically, Petra employs a mixed-methods approach that combines causal inference and computational social science with traditional media effects research. Her work integrates large-scale text analysis with survey-based and experimental designs, alongside qualitative approaches such as media and discourse analysis. This approach allows her to study political messaging both as a structural feature of media systems and as an individual-level mechanism shaping political behavior. More broadly, Petra’s research examines how political psychology, and cognitive processes shape political behavior. She studies these dynamics through research on support for political violence, out-group hostility, racism and discrimination, communicative foundations of democratic militancy, and more. Prior to and alongside her doctoral research, Petra has worked on multidisciplinary research projects at various leading institutions including Cambridge University, LSE, Sciences Po, Stanford University, University of Oxford, and more.

_{Civic Education}

Cassandra Emmons
Global Advisor, Democratic Resilience & Data Analytics at International Foundation of Electoral Systems (IFES)

Kyle Farmbry
Visiting Research Professor, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration – George Washington University

Dr. Kyle Farmbry is currently serving as a Visiting Research Professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University (GW), where he conducts research on community economic development and the current challenges facing the higher education sector. At GW, he has been actively involved in developing the Equitable Aging project, which explores current challenges related to economic, health, and other disparities across groups in the nation’s rapidly aging population. In addition to his work at GW, Farmbry is also serving as a Non-Residential Fellow at the Cornell University Center for Global Democracy. From January 2022 to January 2025, Dr. Farmbry served as President of Guilford College, a small liberal arts college in Greensboro, NC. Prior to that, he served as a professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University-Newark. From August 2013 to July 2019, he served as Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University-Newark. Prior to joining the faculty of Rutgers, Farmbry taught at The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Diego State University, and Grand Valley State University In 2017-2018, Dr. Farmbry served as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow. In this role, he worked with the Vice-Chancellor (President) of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and examined university-based innovation and the implementation of the University of Pretoria-Mamelodi Campus’ anchor institution strategy. In 2016, he served as a Fulbright Fellow examining European Union immigration policies, with an emphasis on the challenges and management of the North African refugee movement and integration in Malta. In February of 2009, Dr. Farmbry was selected as one of 35 people from around the world to serve as a Fulbright New Century Scholar. In this role, he was engaged in research examining factors of youth entrepreneurial and civic engagement in South Africa. Dr. Farmbry’s research and programmatic work have been supported by the Open Society Foundations, the South African Department of Higher Education and Training, and the United States Fulbright Commission, the United States Embassy in South Africa, and the IBM Center for the Business of Government. He recently completed a report for the TIAA Institute entitled Mission Critical: Presidents’ Perspectives on How Universities Serve Society in Turbulent Times. In February of 2009, Dr. Farmbry’s book, Administration and the Other: Explorations of Diversity and Marginalization in the Political Administrative State, was published by Rowman and Littlefield. In August 2012, his book Crisis, Disaster, and Risk: Institutional Response and Emergence was published by M.E. Sharpe. His book The War on Poverty: A Retrospective was published by Rowman and Littlefield in July 2014. His book Migration and Xenophobia: A Three-Country Exploration, examining issues of migration and xenophobia in the United States, Europe, and Southern Africa, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in May 2019. He is currently working on a book exploring evolutionary trends in higher education. Dr. Farmbry has served on the Board of Trustees of The George Washington University. In early November 2021, he was inducted as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. In October 2023, he was elected to serve as a Trustee of the College Board. Dr. Farmbry received his BA, MPA, and Ph.D. degrees from The George Washington University. He completed his J.D. degree at the Rutgers University School of Law.

Abigail Hall
Associate, Law Firm

Diego N. Sánchez
Vice President of Policy and Strategy, Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration

Diego Sánchez is Vice President of Policy and Strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, where he leads the organization’s policy team and legislative and administrative agenda. An immigration lawyer and policy strategist with over 15 years of experience, he works at the intersection of higher education, public policy, and government relations, helping college and university leaders navigate policy developments affecting students, campuses, and communities. Before joining the Presidents’ Alliance, Diego directed the federal immigration portfolio at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Across his career, he has led strategy, coalition engagement, and policy advocacy at the local, state, and national levels. His areas of expertise include higher education and immigration policy, tuition equity and college access for immigrant students and Dreamers, and engagement with policymakers, campus leaders, and partner organizations.

_{Climate and Democracy}

George M. Bob-Milliar
Professor, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana

Dr. George M. Bob-Milliar serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Political Science, and Public Administration at
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, a prominent public university in Ghana. He has held the
position of department chair for three terms and was also Director of the Centre for Cultural and African Studies (CeCASt) at KNUST. His work broadly examines African politics and the historical context of development. Employing multi-method research approaches—including political ethnography, elite interviews, focus groups, surveys, and archival analysis—he investigates political behaviour, party organisations (both formal and informal), traditional and informal institutions, and aspects of social and political history. His academic interests encompass African politics, African political economy, democratic theory, political culture, the history of development’s political economy, political ecology, and qualitative research methods. PhD, University of Ghana. He has contributed to leading journals within his field of specialization, such as African Affairs, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Democratization, Africa Spectrum, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Africa Today, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, the Journal of African History, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Urban Anthropology, the Journal of West African History, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Third World Quarterly, African Economic History, and the International Journal of African Historical Studies, among others. His current book project, Political Party Activism in Africa, analyzes the motivations behind citizen participation in high-intensity electoral politics. He has received support from or partnered with the ERC Synergy Grant, Danish Development Research Council, Formas, British Academy, Swedish Research Council, Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond, and the German Research Foundation, and the World Bank. He has held fellowships and teaching professorships at the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Makerere University (Uganda), the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), and the University of Copenhagen. He was awarded the inaugural African Author Prize in 2010 for the best article published in African Affairs by an author affiliated with an African institution, and in 2012 received recognition from the Centre for International Governance Innovation for his research contributions on African policy issues. He serves as an editor for African Affairs, African Economic History, Contemporary Journal of African Studies, and the Yearbook for the History of Global Development.

Natalie Montecino
Executive Director, Climate Democracy Initiative

Natalie Montecino is Executive Director of the Climate Democracy Initiative, where she works at the intersection of environmental action and participatory democracy to elevate community voice and build more inclusive systems of leadership. An educator and international researcher, her work is shaped by her time as a Fulbright Research Fellow in Japan, where she studied rural revitalization and community resilience. In 2025, she was recognized as a Davos50 Delegate at the World Economic Forum and an Aspen Ideas Festival Fellow. Natalie also serves as an instructor for Stanford University’s e-Minamata and e-Entrepreneurship Japan programs and holds a B.A. in International Studies from Colorado State University. She believes climate solutions are strongest when shaped through inclusive, democratic processes, bringing communities together across generations to define and lead their own futures.

Jayden Yoon
Safeguards Consultant, Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program (TSCFP) Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Jayden Yoon is a Safeguards Consultant with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), working with the Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program (TSCFP). He works at the point where environmental and social standards meet real financing decisions, particularly in supply chains where risk is diffuse, oversight is fragmented, and institutional incentives do not align. He translates policy requirements into operational systems that financial intermediaries can use in practice. His work spans environmental and social risk, climate resilience, and governance, often where frameworks are clearly defined but implementation conditions are not. It includes project structuring, risk screening, and supporting clients navigating gaps between formal requirements and operational reality. As a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Democracy, he examines how institutions hold or fail under crisis conditions, and how climate pressures interact with governance weaknesses. He brings a practitioner’s perspective: what the literature calls institutional resilience looks different from the implementation side.

_{Crisis & Governance}

Georgia Gilroy
Technical Advisor and Consultant, Independent

Georgia Gilroy is a researcher, technical advisor, and program design and evaluation specialist with more than fifteen years of experience working on peace, security, democracy, and governance in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Her research examines the central role of social media and online discourse in contemporary conflict. It emphasizes the need for more integrated approaches to peace and security that account for the interaction between digital activity and real-world political and security dynamics. Her recent work analyzes the communications architecture and social media strategy of the al-Qaida–affiliated group al-Shabaab. This research has been published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and King’s College London’s Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Georgia has presented her findings to policymakers, security actors, and technology companies, including Meta and TikTok. She has also facilitated dialogue and collaboration between East African security institutions and technology platforms to support improved trust, governance, and security outcomes. Georgia has contributed to global policy discussions to build wider awareness of online threats through briefings and presentations to international forums, including the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. In her applied work, Georgia partners with government and non-governmental organizations to design context-sensitive interventions that address the drivers of extremism, conflict, and political violence, while supporting efforts to strengthen the social contract between citizens and the state. In collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), she designed and delivered training curricula for East African law enforcement agencies on the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism contexts. She currently advises the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on initiatives to strengthen democratic security sector governance in Kenya, with a particular focus on the political and social impacts of social media and emerging technologies. She previously served as the East and Central Africa expert for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s (ICAI) review of UK support to democracy and human rights. Georgia lived and worked in Kenya for nearly a decade, during which time she collaborated closely with civil society, host governments, and international partners across the Horn and East Africa, forging relationships with a network of stakeholders operating locally, regionally, and internationally in support of peace, security and preventing violent extremism. She holds an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE). Georgia is honored to serve as a Non-Resident Fellow at Cornell University’s Center on Global Democracy for 2026. Her research interests include the impact of online manipulation and algorithmic amplification on polarizing and hateful narratives on democratic systems; the challenges and opportunities technology presents in addressing digitally enabled extremism; and the potential for technology to expand voice, agency, and citizen mobilization in resistance to democratic backsliding.

Jayden Yoon
Safeguards Consultant, Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program (TSCFP) Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Kimana Zulueta-Fülscher
Acting Head, Constitutional Governance and Rule of Law, International IDEA

Kimana Zulueta-Fülscher, PhD, is International IDEA’s Acting Head of the Constitutional Governance and Rule of Law Programme. It is the second time she acts in this function while the Head of the programme is on special leave (2020-21). She has also functioned as a Senior Advisor in the same programme (2014-18, 2021-25) and Programme Manager of the MyConstitution Project, located in Yangon, Myanmar (2018-2020). Kimana has been engaged in constitutional negotiations in a range of countries, including Armenia, Bangladesh, Chile, Gabon, Myanmar, or Venezuela. She is also the former head of the Democracy, Conflict and Security unit at International IDEA, where, amongst others, she managed a project on the nexus between organized crime and politics, and developed International IDEA’s institutional policy on mainstreaming conflict sensitivity. Her research and work currently focuses on comparative constitutional process and design, with a special emphasis on constitution-building processes in fragile and conflict-affected settings. She developed International IDEA’s database on constitution-building processes in fragile settings, and is currently working on a book on Constitution-Making Without Parties: the Failure of Chile’s Constitutional Replacement, together with Prof. Gabriel Negretto and Ms. Isabel Aninat to be published by Cambridge University Press. She is the author of various academic articles and book chapters, and has contributed to the policy literature for many years with papers, among others, on Constitution-Building in Deeply Fragmented States (co-authored with Prof. Christina Murra, 2025), the Impact of Guiding Principles on Constitution Making (co-authored with Thibaut Noël, 2025), the Role of Constitutions in Natural Resource Governance (co-authored with Prof. Christina Murray, 2024), How Constitution Making Fails (2023), (S)electing Constitution-Making Bodies in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings (co-authored with Sumit Bisarya, 2018), Substate Constitutions (co-authored with Dr Asanga Welikala, 2017), Sequencing Peace Agreements and Constitutions in Political Settlement Processes (co-authored with Prof. Christine Bell, 2016), and Interim Constitutions as Conflict Management Tools (2015). Before her time at International IDEA, Kimana was a senior researcher at the German Development Institute (currently the German Institute of Development and Sustainability) where she worked and published in the area of political transformation in fragile contexts. Earlier she worked for the European Partnership for Democracy in Brussels; she was a post-doctoral fellow at the EUISS, Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University; she was a researcher in the democratization department of the European think tank FRIDE, a political risk analyst for Exclusive Analysis in its Western Europe division, and acted as an international elections observer for both the OSCE/ODIHR in Kazakhstan and Armenia, and the OAS in Mexico. Zulueta-Fülscher has a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain (2007). She is part of the German civilian expert pool for peace operations since 2011, and part of the United Nations Development Programme Crisis Response Roster on Governance and Constitutions since 2017.

_{Media, Narratives, & Political Communication}

Nejla Asimovic
Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

Nejla Asimovic is an Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University, and is a Research Affiliate at NYU’s Center for Social Media, AI and Politics. Her research explores the interplay between digital technologies and intergroup relations in deeply divided societies globally, with a particular interest in designing and evaluating online strategies for strengthening group relations. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Comparative Political Studies, and Political Science Research & Methods, among others, and has been supported by grants from the NSF, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Innovations for Poverty Action.

Eddy Yen-Ting Lin
Robbins J.S.D. Fellow, UC Berkeley School of Law

Eddy Yen-Ting Lin is a Lloyd M. Robbins J.S.D. Fellow at UC Berkeley Law. He serves as Deputy Chair of the Youth Advisory Committee of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan and as a board member of the Lee Teng-hui Foundation, honoring Taiwan’s first president, post-democratization. Previously, Eddy led public policy strategy for Amazon in Taiwan and drove XR and AI initiatives at Meta. As the founding Managing Director of the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy, he initiated the “Civil Rights for 18” constitutional amendment campaign to lower the voting age. Eddy focuses his research on law, democracy, and technology. He holds an LL.M. from the University of Pennsylvania and both an M.A. and LL.B. from National Taiwan University.

Petra Radic
PhD Candidate in Comparative Politics, Central European University (CEU)

Sofiya Sayankina
Senior Researcher, Center for International Cooperation and Strategy, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Sofiya Sayankina is a senior researcher at the Center for International Cooperation and Strategy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul and a visiting research fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Her work focuses on the democracy and sovereignty issues in East Asia. Her research was published in Asian Survey, Pacific Focus, Korea Observer, and Territory, Politics, Governance. She holds a PhD in Political Science from HUFS and an MA in Global Affairs and Policy from Yonsei University. Previously, Dr. Sayankina was a visiting research fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University and a consultant at the Korean National Commission for UNESCO.

Moritz von Knebel
Chief of Staff, Institute for Law and AI

Moritz von Knebel works at the intersection of AI, law, and policy. He has worked with a number of philanthropic foundations, think tanks and civil society representatives in the US, the UK, Taiwan and Europe. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and featured at conferences in Stanford, Berlin, Singapore, Riyadh and Brussels. Previously, he supported the German government and the GIZ as a Fellow with their series of International Digital Dialogues and served as a consultant to the OECD, as a Mila AI Policy Fellow and as a Mercator Fellow on International Affairs.

_{Tech, Democracy & Security}

Georgia Gilroy
Technical Advisor and Consultant, Independent

Maria Milosh

Predoctoral Scholar at Data & Democracy Lab at UChicago, Data & Democracy Lab at UChicago

Maria is a computational social scientist and civic technologist focused on self-governance, digital democracy, and algorithmic accountability.

Lauren Mushro
Human-Centered Design Lead, RAIOps, Bank of Montreal

Lauren Mushro is an AI supply chain design leader currently serving as the Human-Centered Design Lead in Responsible AI at the Bank of Montreal. She is simultaneously serving as an Adjunct Associate professor in AI Ethics at the City University of New York (CUNY), and a Visiting Professor in Responsible AI Design at the University of Vic–ELISAVA. Previously, she was Head of Product at Sapien AI and a Technology Policy Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Lauren holds a PhD in Modern Languages from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Boston College. She is a published author whose research focuses on human-computer interaction, linguistic flattening, bias mitigation in model training, and the future of work.

Moritz von Knebel
Chief of Staff, Institute for Law and AI