Erica Chenoweth

Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. Chenoweth studies political violence and its alternatives. They have authored or edited nine other books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression, including the recent Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (2021) and On Revolutions (2022).

Chenoweth’s current book project, The End of People Power, investigates the puzzling decline in the success of civil resistance movements in the past decade, even as the technique has become more popular worldwide. Along with Zoe Marks, Chenoweth is also the author of the forthcoming book Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution, which explores how women's participation impacts mass movements.

At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. There they maintain the NAVCO Data Project, one of the world’s leading datasets on historical and contemporary mass mobilizations around the globe; the Women in Resistance (WiRe) Dataset, which catalogues the gender composition of such movements (with Zoe Marks); and the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest and scholarly project that documents political mobilization in the US (with Jeremy Pressman). 

Foreign Policy ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013 for their efforts to promote the empirical study of nonviolent resistance. Chenoweth received 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. Chenoweth’s book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011) with Maria J. Stephan won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. In 2022, Chenoweth was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Chenoweth’s research has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Magazine, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, TEDxBoulder, The Hidden Brain, and elsewhere. They co-founded the award-winning online magazine Political Violence @ a Glance and have written occasionally for The Monkey Cage channel at The Washington Post. Their research has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, USIP, USAID, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, among others.

At Harvard, Chenoweth is a Faculty Affiliate at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and Women in Public Policy Program. They are also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where Chenoweth and Zoe Marks co-chair the Political Violence Workshop.

Before coming to Harvard, Chenoweth taught at the University of Denver and Wesleyan University. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of Dayton.