Weatherhead Scholars Program
The Weatherhead Scholars Program offers a rare opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary cohort at Harvard University, bringing together leading academics and accomplished practitioners from around the world. Established in 1958 as the Fellows Program and reconfigured in 2017, the program reflects a longstanding commitment to bridging scholarship and practice. Today, amid shifting trends in global governance, great power competition, climate disruption, and rising inequality, the program fosters meaningful dialogue between scholars and practitioners working on international, transnational, and comparative global issues.
Based at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs—Harvard’s largest international social science research center—the program benefits from an extraordinary academic ecosystem dedicated to global affairs. The Center promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and serves as a hub where research and real-world insights converge.
The Weatherhead Scholars Program includes postdoctoral researchers, visiting faculty, and experienced professionals such as diplomats, military officers, journalists, civil servants, NGO leaders, and private sector innovators. Most affiliates spend the full academic year in residence, though some participate for a semester. All affiliates pursue independent research and have opportunities to contribute to the Center’s intellectual community.
Administration
Melani Cammett is the faculty chair of the Weatherhead Scholars Program. Walid Hammam is the director. Sarah Pollack assists with the program.
Melani Cammett
mcammett@g.harvard.edu
Erez Manela
manela@fas.harvard.edu
Walid Hammam
walid_hammam@wcfia.harvard.edu
Sarah Pollack
spollack@wcfia.harvard.edu
Current Affiliates (2025–2026)
Mariana Alegre Escorza
Salam Alsaadi
Research interests: Authoritarianism; comparative democratization; state repression; uprisings; civil wars; ethnic groups mobilization; and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Dominik Bartmański
Research interests: Comparative cultural sociology; cultural inequality and symbolic violence; social theory; history of human sciences; material culture; urban ethnography and spatial sociology; and phenomenology.
Lina Benabdallah
Research interests: Nostalgia and global politics; historical international relations; Global South; and global ordering.
Gal Bitton
Research interests: International political economy; international relations; finance; culture and identity; foreign policy; political psychology; biases; and political behavior.
Ditmir Bushati
Research interests: Transatlantic relations; peace and prosperity in South East Europe (SEE); and the European project and regional security.
Gianluca Busilacchi
Research interests: Social policy; poverty; social investment; labor market; healthcare policies; analytical sociology; and capability approach.
Michał Chabros
Research interests: History and contemporary politics of Russia, Iran, Turkiye, central Asia; international relations; maritime history; and diplomacy.
Meera Choi
Research interests: Gender and sexuality; culture; political economy; family; transnational feminism; feminist and queer theory; qualitative methods; and South Korea.
Pronouns: she/her
Marc Dorpema
Research interests: Environmental history; history of capitalism; political economy; climate change; competition law; and empire.
All Programs & Projects
The Weatherhead Center hosts formal programs that link faculty and affiliates working in similar research areas. Projects at the Weatherhead Center are discrete activities that connect interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and students working in a specific research area. Projects may include student internships, multiyear research activities, and more.
The Canada Program, made possible by the William Lyon Mackenzie King Endowment, presents rich intellectual opportunities for Canadian studies at Harvard: graduate and undergraduate courses offered by distinguished visiting Canadianist scholars across the social sciences and professional schools, dissertation research grants for Harvard graduate students, thesis research and travel funding for Harvard undergraduates, funding for Harvard faculty-hosted Canadian studies specialists, a vibrant seminar series of esteemed Canadianist guest speakers, and an annual faculty conference.
The Program on US-Japan Relations was founded in response to Japan's rise as a leading global power. We seek to advance knowledge of US-Japan relations and contemporary Japanese economy, politics, society, and culture from comparative, global, and transnational perspectives. Every academic year, we host approximately sixteen postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and practitioner associates to conduct research on campus. We sponsor a weekly hybrid seminar series, biweekly associate workshops, Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS), an annual Distinguished Visitor program, conferences on Harvard campus and in Tokyo, and other events.
SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center explores the role of formal organizations—including corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and professional associations—in the creation of international social, environmental, economic, and political conventions. Our project is a partnership between the Weatherhead Center and the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR), a membership-supported nonprofit sponsored by leading universities and business schools in Scandinavia. We welcome visiting scholars to Harvard for up to one year to use the tools of organizational science to work on international topics. While at Harvard, visitors connect with scholars from across the campus, and around Boston, through various seminars and workshops.
The Sustainability Transparency Accountability Research (STAR) Lab brings together a group of scholars at Harvard University and beyond conducting research on new business initiatives aimed at improving accountability and sustainability as well as generating positive social and environmental impacts. Among these initiatives are programs addressing issues in global supply chains and the impacts of multinational businesses in developing countries, climate change and environmental sustainability, discrimination and human rights, and more. New research is critical for the design and evaluation of these initiatives and for understanding their impacts on business, social, and environmental outcomes. We support collaborations among Harvard scholars and build partnerships between the group and a diverse set of companies, with headquarters and operations in many different countries.
The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies is dedicated to increasing our knowledge of the culture, history, and institutions of the world's major regions and countries. To accomplish this goal, we sponsor the Academy Scholars Program, which identifies and supports outstanding scholars at the start of their academic careers whose work combines excellence in a social science discipline with a command of the language and knowledge or expertise of countries or regions outside of the United States or Canada. Their scholarship spans traditional disciplinary divisions and elucidates comparative, transnational, or domestic issues, past or present. Academy Scholars are appointed for a two-year, in-residence, postdoctoral fellowship. They are mentored by the Harvard Academy Senior Scholars, a cohort of faculty members who are committed to supporting the Academy Scholars as they work to achieve their potential.
Learn more about The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies >
The Weatherhead Scholars Program offers visiting faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and experienced practitioners the opportunity to spend up to one year at Harvard conducting comparative international research. During their time in residence, affiliates participate in the weekly Scholars’ seminar and contribute to the Center’s many intellectual activities. They may also audit courses and engage with the undergraduate and graduate student communities.