People

The faculty and staff of the Scrivner Institute are defined by their passion, expertise and dedication to using public policy as a tool to create a more just, equitable and healthy world. The Institute draws faculty from across the Korbel School and the whole University to ensure its research, programming, and curriculum interrogates policy in an interdisciplinary and holistic way. Learn more about them and how they're advancing positive public policy solutions below.

Scrivner Institute Team

Naazneen Barma

Director

Naazneen H. Barma is the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Professor of Public Policy, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, and the founding Director of the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is a political scientist whose work spans topics including peacebuilding, foreign aid, the political economy of development, and global governance, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and the Pacific. She is currently working on a collaborative project on transnational statebuilding networks as a major form of contemporary multilateral engagement. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Minerva Research Initiative, and the Berggruen Institute, among others. Dr. Barma is, most recently, author of The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States (Cambridge University Press 2017) and co-editor of The Political Economy Reader: Contending Perspectives and Contemporary Debates (Taylor & Francis 2022). Dr. Barma was a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School from 2000–2010 and previously a development practitioner at the World Bank, where she worked for six years on governance and institutional reform in the East Asia Pacific Region. She is one of the founders and a Senior Director of Bridging the Gap, a grant-funded initiative devoted to enhancing the policy impact of contemporary international affairs scholarship.

Katie Aker

Assistant Director

Katie Aker is the Assistant Director of the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, where she oversees the institute's operations, programming, and faculty research management. She holds a Master of Public Administration and a Master of Arts in International Education Management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Katie has extensive experience in social impact, community development, and educational initiatives, having coordinated programs focused on university-community engaged research, ocean conservation, social enterprise, and sustainable agriculture action research. She also served as a community economic development advisor with the Peace Corps in Peru. Katie holds undergraduate degrees in Business Management and Spanish from Colorado State University.

Landon Mascareñaz

Consultant, Democracy and Civil Discourse Initiatives

Landon is an educator, writer, and democracy builder. As co-founder of the Open Systems Institute, he partners with leaders around the country to encourage an emerging discipline for openers everywhere. He advises The Colorado Project and Denver Democracy Summit, promotes democracy redesign through ranked choice voting as co-chair of Denver Deserves Democracy, and expands economic opportunity in southern Colorado through adapting the award-winning Emergent Campus initiative to Trinidad. He is also a founding leader of The Cornerstone Project, working to upgrade democracy infrastructure in education races across the country. Dr. Mascareñaz is the current elected chair of the Colorado State Board for Community Colleges & Occupational Education, appointed by Colorado Governor Jared Polis. He also serves as chair of the Reisher Scholars Program, supporting students across the state to achieve their higher education goals.

Scrivner Faculty

Naazneen Barma

Scrivner Professor of Public Policy

Expertise: political economy, statebuilding, public policy, foreign aid, global governance

Ajenai Clemmons

Assistant Professor

Expertise: police-community relations in the U.S. and Europe, inequality, intersection of policy and politics

Lapo Salucci

Teaching Professor

Expertise: urban politics and policy, demographics, US policy, methodology, statistics

Kaitlyn Sims

Assistant Professor

Expertise: applied economics, public health, public policy, crime

Korbel Faculty

Deborah Avant

Distinguished University Professor, Sié Chéou-Kang Chair

Expertise: security, human rights, climate, technology, business, non-state actors, governance

Rachel Epstein

Professor

Expertise: economy, security, international organizations

Frank N Laird

Professor

Expertise: renewable energy policy, renewable energy politics, environmental policy, climate policy, science policy

Rebecca Galemba

Professor, Co-Director of DU Center for Immigration Policy & Research

Expertise: Im/migration; Borders; Labor Rights; Smuggling; Engaged Ethnography

Fritz Mayer

Dean and Professor, Korbel School

Expertise: international trade, climate change, value chains, narrative politics, democracy

Linda Mendez Barrientos

Assistant Professor

Expertise: power, institutional change, water governance, environmental justice

Tamra Pearson d’Estrée

Professor

Expertise: identity dimensions of social and ethnic conflict, intergroup conciliation and reconciliation, evaluation of international, community and environmental conflict resolution

Martin Rhodes

Professor

Expertise: comparative political economy, European public policy

Francisco Rodríguez

Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs

Expertise: Economic sanctions, economic development, Latin American economics

Rachel Sigman

Associate Professor

Expertise: democracy, governance, public administration, bureaucratic politics, policy implementation, African politics and administration, state capacity