Prof. Yasmine Ergas

Prof. Yasmine Ergas is Director of the Specialization on Gender and Public Policy and Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Senior Advisor to Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. A lawyer and sociologist, she focuses on issues regarding gender and women’s rights. Her current research addresses the ways in which the analysis of gender relations has been integrated into international affairs, the emergence of a global market in reproductive services and the impact of human rights programs and policies.

Prof. Ergas has served as a consultant to international and domestic policy organizations, including the OECD, UNESCO, the Millennium Villages Project, the New York City Commission on Human Rights, CENSIS, a major applied social research institute in Italy, and on the staff of the Social Science Research Council. Among other engagements, she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, the editorial board of Ingenere.it, the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School and the Executive Committee of Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and is the Co-convener of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Council at Columbia University. She was a Guest Professor both on Women and International Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at the University of Palermo and on Gender and International Human Rights at the University of Milan, in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

A graduate of the University of Sussex, University of Rome and Columbia Law School, Ergas has received numerous honors, fellowships and grants, including from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Brown University, American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, the Italian Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca and the Institute for Social Economic and Policy Research at Columbia University.