Dr. Kelebogile Zvobgo (she/her)
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kellyzvobgo.bsky.social
Dr. Kelebogile Zvobgo (she/her)
@kellyzvobgo.bsky.social
Political scientist • Author of Governing Truth bit.ly/governing-truth • Committed to human rights, transitional justice, and international law

zvobgo.com
Excited to receive page proofs for GOVERNING TRUTH today! It’ll be out early next year, with the paperback priced at $29.95 – run, don’t walk, to get your copy!

You can pre-order here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...
September 30, 2025 at 9:06 PM
🔟 Last but not least, Cath Collins and Selbi Durdiyeva reviewed three recent books that, like our field, are epistemologically and methodologically rich and diverse, to say nothing of the empirical cases they analyze in new light.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
April 4, 2025 at 1:16 PM
9️⃣ In “Listening and Preparing the Society to Engage,” María Paula Prada Ramírez and Leslie Wingender reflect on their experience working with the Commission for Truth, Coexistence and Non-Recurrence in Colombia, incl. re: outreach, communication, and legacy.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
April 3, 2025 at 2:26 PM
8️⃣ In “The (Many) Afterlives of Transitional Justice,” Tine Destrooper and Elke Evrard conduct an important study of practitioner views of the field’s evolution. With 69 participants from 7 countries, this isn’t one to miss!

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
April 3, 2025 at 1:06 AM
7️⃣ In “Breaking the Echo Chambers,” Noha Aboueldahab invites an intellectual exchange between the field of transitional justice and Third World Approaches to International Law, with the goal of blending their respective foci on policy prescription and scholarly praxis.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
April 1, 2025 at 11:40 AM
6️⃣ In “Difficult Stories that Haunt,” Ulrike Lühe and @erinbaines.bsky.social challenge Western empirical social science approaches that transform narratives of harm and abuse into “clean” and “manageable” data for research analysis.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
March 27, 2025 at 1:57 PM
5️⃣ In “The State of Repair,” Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch and Jennifer Dixon conduct an extensive text analysis of NGO and IGO reports, notably by @amnesty.org and the @un.org, since 1945, to map evolution in the norm of reparations.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
March 26, 2025 at 11:49 PM
4️⃣ In “Divisive Documents,” Sofie Budhoo draws on her fieldwork in Odek, Uganda around the time of the International Criminal Court’s trial of Dominic Ongwen to reveal many unintended consequences of legal documentation practices.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
March 25, 2025 at 10:15 PM
3️⃣ Cynthia Horne analyzes data from an original survey and finds that members of the public in Latvia prefer that the government focus on current issues rather than past ones. Yet political polarization along ethnic lines suggests transitional justice is still needed.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
March 24, 2025 at 3:37 PM
2️⃣ @geoffdancy.bsky.social and Oskar Timo Thoms bring new evidence to the long-theorized relationship between transitional justice and democracy. They find that transitional justice decreases the likelihood of democratic reversal but not gradual democratic erosion.

Link: doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
March 21, 2025 at 2:55 PM
1️⃣ In “‘The Strength to Comprehend the Incomprehensible,’” @bakiner.bsky.social reads Adorno for today and challenges us to ponder whether resurgent authoritarianism is due to the world’s failure to comprehensively and continuously confront the violent past.

Link: academic.oup.com/ijtj/article...
March 20, 2025 at 1:30 PM
📔 “The Afterlives of Transitional Justice” — the 2025 Special Issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (@oxunipress.bsky.social), which I edited with Francesca Parente — is out now!

You can read our editors’ introduction at the link in the comments below.
March 19, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Less than a year since they walked across the graduation stage, International Justice Lab alumnae Alexandra Byrne and Bilen Zerie and I have published our research in Human Rights Quarterly!

Producing Truth: Public Memory Projects in Post-Violence Societies is available via doi.org/10.1353/hrq....
May 8, 2024 at 12:13 AM
What happens when you bring an Americanist (Jamil Scott), a comparativist (Daniel Solomon) + an IR scholar (me) together to think about contemporary justice for historical injustice?

Happy our article for the upcoming IJTJ special issue on race, racism + TJ is now online. 🌐 doi.org/10.1093/ijtj...
February 8, 2024 at 2:43 PM
New publication alert! “Co-Opting Truth” is out now in Human Rights Quarterly! #polisky #dictatorsky

With @drshaunagillooly.bsky.social and Daniel Solomon, I develop and evaluate a theory of why and how autocrats use truth commissions.

🔗 here doi.org/10.1353/hrq....

🧵 below
January 31, 2024 at 1:51 PM
Entering my French cooking era. #poliscicooks #poliscibakes

📷 Braised pork and apple-pear galette
January 10, 2024 at 1:46 AM
What a privilege to be at @UConn for the inaugural Dodd Center for Human Rights Summit, which was opened by Oleksandra Matviichuk, the 2022 Nobel laureate for peace, who is helping to defend Ukrainians’ human rights amid Russian aggression.

Thanks to my dear colleagues for the invitation.
October 27, 2023 at 12:25 AM
Late-stage capitalism.
September 25, 2023 at 2:52 PM
It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since we launched year 5 of the International Justice Lab!

Thanks to @laiabalcells.bsky.social, Nancy Combs, Francesca Parente, Kira Allmann, our fellows, and the Global Research Institute for making it a success! #polisky
September 23, 2023 at 6:47 PM
I am excited to announce Francesca Parente and I will be guest editing the 2025 special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice! This is a full-circle moment for me, as my first journal submission was to IJTJ.

The CfP is available here: academic.oup.com/ijtj/pages/cfp. #polisky
September 22, 2023 at 9:35 PM
ICYMI, I have a new article in BJPS: "Social Pressure in the International Human Rights Regime"!

Building on two ISQ articles, Zvobgo et al. (2020) and Eldredge & Shannon (2022), we explain why states lift treaty reservations and improve their legal commitments. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

#polisky
September 21, 2023 at 5:24 PM
Today's the day! @goodauth.bsky.social is here!

Good Authority is the successor to The Monkey Cage, a site about politics + political science founded in 2007 + published at The Washington Post from 2013-22. The spirit of TMC will carry on here.

Excited to be on the team! goodauthority.org
#polisky
September 21, 2023 at 12:37 AM