Axes of Inequality Speaker: Elke Zuern

Elke Zuern is currently a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College. Zuern earned her doctorate at Columbia University, where her dissertation research focused on the decline of participatory democracy in South Africa’s negotiated transition to democracy. More recently, Zuern’s research has focused on how globalization and social inequality relate to social movements in post-apartheid South Africa, serving as a contributor to an edited volume entitled Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Some of her research interests include the role of social movements in new democracies, institutional and extra- institutional mechanisms of protest, popular responses to poverty and inequality, state-civil society alliances, and the role of violence in processes of democratization. Zuern was the recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Amherst College and was selected for a Lowenstein fellowship.