Kelebogile Zvobgo

Background

Kelebogile Zvobgo is the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Government at William & Mary and founder and director of the International Justice Lab. She is also a faculty affiliate at the Global Research Institute, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California in 2021 and received the USC Ph.D. Achievement Award. She earned her B.A. in International Relations and French Language & Literature from Pomona College in 2014 and received the Cordell Hull Prize in International Relations.

 Dr. Zvobgo's research broadly engages questions in human rights, transitional justice, and international law and courts, and has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including International Studies Quarterly and the Journal of Human Rights, and mainstream outlets like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post. She has appeared on ABC News, Bloomberg TV, CNN, NPR, and PRX, and has been quoted in The Atlantic and Vox, among others. Both the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association awarded her Best Paper in Human Rights in 2019 and Best Dissertation in Human Rights in 2022. Also recognized for her teaching, she is the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Craig L. Brians Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Mentorship.

 Much of Dr. Zvobgo’s past and ongoing research concerns quasi-judicial and judicial bodies that have proliferated around the globe over the past half-century to address serious violations of human rights law and humanitarian law. Her research in this vein has centered on domestic truth commissions and international criminal tribunals, especially the International Criminal Court. Her work has been generously supported through a number of grants and fellowships, including from the National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship), USC (Provost Fellowship in the Social Sciences), and W&M (GRI Pre-doctoral Fellowship).

 Her first book, Governing Truth: NGOs and the Politics of Transitional Justice, explains variation in governments’ decisions to adopt transitional justice institutions, design them to succeed, and follow up on them with additional measures. She argues and demonstrates that domestic and international civil society actors, who make up a global network, help drive government transitional justice policy through advocacy, technical expertise, and operational assistance. She focuses the analysis on truth commissions, leveraging novel quantitative data from the Varieties of Truth Commissions, and focus groups and interviews with government officials, former truth commission leaders, international organization representatives, and domestic and international NGO advocates in 13 countries. Currently under contract with Oxford University Press, the book is expected to be published in fall 2025.