Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Expert on Social Movements and Human Rights, Joins School of Public Policy’s Founding Faculty

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, a political sociologist whose work focuses on social movements and human rights, will join SPP as assistant professor in summer 2013. His current research, funded by the National Science Foundation, explores the impact of social movements on human rights violators in India, particularly slaveholders engaged in contemporary forms of slavery. Recent publications include an edited volume (From Human Trafficking to Human Rights, 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press) in which leading scholars contribute to an emerging human rights approach to human trafficking. 

Prior to academia Austin worked in the advocacy and policy sectors. From 2003 through 2009 he was on staff at Free the Slaves, the sister organization of Anti-Slavery International, itself the world’s first and longest running human rights NGO. He has also worked with civil society groups on the US-Mexico border to train law enforcement, border patrol, legal professionals and community groups to identify and respond to cases of international trafficking. He has spent shorter stints in Kosovo (supporting repatriation efforts after NATO airstrikes), in Bosnia and Herzegovina (enhancing the UN Mine Action Centre’s organizational capacity), and in India (as an undercover investigator into cases of trafficking for sexual exploitation). Austin has lived in East Africa for the past three years and is interested in slaveholding in Mali.

Austin is a member and regular contributor to the Mobilizing Ideas blog collective. His posts can be found here. He is also a member of the editorial staff at Mobilization, the leading journal of social movements.

Austin comes to SPP from the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame he was the Assistant Director at the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change and a Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. In addition to his doctoral work at Notre Dame, Austin holds a degree in human rights and international security from the Korbel School of International Studies.