We are pleased to welcome Dr. Patrice McMahon, Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as she joined the Community of Democracies as part of the Council on Foreign Relations International Fellowship for 2024-2025.

McMahon’s academic career and professional appointments have focused on democratization, civil society activism, human security, and transnational politics. In her new role, as an advisor to the Community of Democracies, she will bring her academic and research experience to support the Community’s strategic initiatives.

Currently, she is also writing a book on Polish humanitarianism, Ordinary People, with a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities. McMahon’s research focuses on humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding, civil society activism, and U.S. foreign policy. She is the co-author and co-editor most recently of  Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe: people power (Routledge Press), the author of The NGO Game: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in the Balkans and Beyond (Cornell University Press, 2017) and is the co-author of American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: U.S. Foreign Policy, Human Rights and World Order (Routledge: 2017). Her research has appeared in various publications, including Foreign Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly, East European Politics and Societies, Democratization, and Ethnopolitics and has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS), the U.S. Department of State, NCEER, the Soros Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Polish Science Foundation.