Erica Chenoweth is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and an Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. Foreign Policy magazine ranker her among the top 100 global thinkers of 2013 for her work on the empirical study of nonviolent resistance. Together with Maria J. Stephan of the U.S. State Department, she is the winner of the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press) also won the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award given annually by the American Political Science Association in recognition of the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the U.S. the previous year.

Erica has held appointments at Harvard, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and Wesleyan University. She has published over a dozen articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes. She is currently co-chair of the Academic Advisory Board at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, a Board Member of the International Security and Arms Control Section of the American Political Science Association, and a Team Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Erica has presented her research all over the world at various academic conferences, government workshops, and international governmental organizations. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and elsewhere. She co-hosts the award-winning blog Political Violence @ a Glance. Erica holds 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. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

“Why Civil Resistance Works is the first systematic study of its kind, and takes us well beyond the research of Gene Sharp and others to demonstrate once and for all the power of nonviolent civil resistance for positive social change,” John Dear wrote in his review for The National Catholic Reporter. “Anyone interested in the methodology of nonviolent conflict resolution should get this book and study it.”

“Our findings demonstrate that power actually depends on the consent of the civilian population, consent that can be withdrawn and reassigned to more legitimate or more compelling parties,” the authors write. “We hope that this book challenges the conventional wisdom concerning the effectiveness of nonviolent struggle and encourages scholars and policy makers to take seriously the role that civilians play in actively prosecuting conflict without resorting to violence.”