School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 1-3 of 3 Results

  • J. P. Daughton

    J. P. Daughton

    Professor of History and, by courtesy, of French and Italian

    BioJ. P. Daughton is Professor of History, and Professor (by courtesy) of French and Italian. He is a historian of Europe, imperialism and colonialism, and global history. His teaching and publications explore political, cultural, social, and environmental history, as well as the modern history of religion, technology, and humanitarianism. His affiliations at Stanford include the Europe Center, the Center for African Studies, and the Center for Human Rights and International Justice.

    His most recent book, In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism (W. W. Norton, 2021), tells the story of one of the deadliest construction projects in history. Between 1921 and 1934, French colonial interests recruited -- most often by force -- more than 100,000 men, women, and children to work on a 500-kilometer stretch of rail between Brazzaville and the Atlantic Coast. In the end, tens of thousands of Africans were dead, killed by mistreatment, starvation, and disease. The book painstakingly recounts the experiences of local communities in the face of colonial economic development, considers why the railroad witnessed such extraordinary violence and suffering, and explores how the rhetoric of "civilization" and "development" were used to justify the loss of so many African lives. In the Forest of No Joy was reviewed widely, including in the Economist, the New York Review of Books, the TLS, and the New Yorker. It was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and was a finalist for the American Library in Paris Book Prize. A French translation is forthcoming with Éditions du Seuil.

    Daughton is also the author of An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2006), a book that tells the story of how troubled relations between Catholic missionaries and a host of republican critics shaped colonial policies, Catholic perspectives, and domestic French politics in the decades before the First World War. Based on archival research from four continents, the book challenges the long-held view that French colonizing and “civilizing” goals were the product of a distinctly secular republican ideology built on Enlightenment ideals. A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, An Empire Divided was awarded the George Louis Beer Prize for the best book in international history from the American Historical Association, as well as the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society.

    He is also the editor, with Owen White, of In God’s Empire: French Missionaries in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2012), a collection of essays on the role played by French religious workers in the empire and beyond. His essays and reviews, on themes related to colonial violence, international governance, informal empire, and cultural policy, have appeared in publications like the Journal of Modern History, the American Historical Review, and French Historical Studies.

    Daughton’s PhD advisees have written on a wide range of subjects, from nineteenth-century French cultural policies to the history of famine, and from alcohol consumption and violence in the First World War to the work of international NGOs in Algeria during decolonization. He is currently accepting graduate students interested in transnational history, modern Europe, empire, humanitarianism, international politics, and environment history.

  • Luis Fabiano de Assis, Ph.D.

    Luis Fabiano de Assis, Ph.D.

    Affiliate, Center for Human Rights and International Justice

    BioDr. Luis Fabiano de Assis is a Brazilian Federal Prosecutor, Data Scientist, and Professor at the National School for Public Prosecutors in Brazil. As an internationally recognized expert on issues of new data technologies and their use to develop evidence-based decent work programs and policies, he has advised the United Nations (United Nations University, New York), the International Labour Organization (Brazil, Latin America, and Geneva), and the World Bank (Washington/DC).

    Luis is a member of the Alliance 8.7 Knowledge Platform Reference Group (United Nations University), where he contributes to advancing the scientific knowledge base and facilitate uptake and development of evidence-based policy initiatives with the aim of eradicating modern slavery, forced labor, child labor, and human trafficking to achieve SDG target 8.7.

    As a Chief Research & Data Officer at the Brazilian Federal Labor Prosecution Office, he has led the development of the SmartLab Initiative (http://smartlabbr.org/), an innovative multi-stakeholder knowledge-management strategy to promote human rights at work. In collaboration with the ILO and a variety of partners, the initiative has given rise to a knowledge base that combines myriad primary and secondary open data sources, providing public and private stakeholders with readily available information to improve policy-making at the national, regional, and local level. By creating open source and open data observatories, the initiative uses data and knowledge to fight human trafficking, child labor, inequality at work, and poor occupational safety and health practices.

    At the National School of Prosecutors in Brazil, he teaches in the areas of law and public policies, and his courses encompass issues such as methods to move law-enforcement towards real-time interventions using big data and new technologies; behavioral sciences principles applied to policymaking and accountability systems; design of evidence-based projects, programs and policies to strengthen the rule of law and protect human rights; techniques to develop data-driven investigations and collective (class actions) lawsuits; and regulations on data protection.

    His current research encompasses issues such as targeting and coverage of government cash transfers and social assistance programs towards human trafficking victims; health standards, mortality rates, and life expectancy of human trafficking survivors; value-chain studies to support private stakeholders in relation to compliance, supplier qualification processes, monitoring, due diligence, and risk assessment; studies supported by machine-learning concerning the prediction of risk, vulnerabilities and resource allocation; mapping of national and international human trafficking routes and flows, focusing on refugees from Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Haiti, and Peru; and mapping of governmental data gaps to improve human rights data collection systems.

    The objectives include developing research on how the international community can benefit from existing data sources and new technologies to develop evidence-based counter-trafficking public policies, strengthen the rule of law, improve accountability systems, and protect and promote human rights broadly. Also, Luis works in Brazil to disseminate good practices to improve human trafficking data collection and usage based on the guidelines “Getting to Good Human Trafficking Data: Everyday Guidelines for Frontline Practitioners.”

    LLB (Bachelor of Law, 2002), University of São Paulo
    LLM (Master of Law, 2008), University of São Paulo
    Ph.D. in Law (2011), University of São Paulo
    Visiting Research Fellow, Stanford University (2018)
    Visiting Scholar, Stanford University (2019-20)

  • Larry Diamond

    Larry Diamond

    Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor, by courtesy, of Sociology and of Political Science

    Current Research and Scholarly Interestsdemocratic development and regime change; U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad; comparative trends in the quality and stability of democracy in developing countries and postcommunist states; and public opinion in new democracies, especially in East Asia