HFG Welcomes Its 2026 Emerging Scholars
September 16, 2026
(NEW YORK) — Today, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation announced the selection of its 2026 HFG Emerging Scholars. The nine doctoral candidates—selected through a rigorous evaluation process—are conducting research that increases understanding of problems of violence around the world.
The scholars are completing dissertations on a range of important topics, including school shooting incidents in the United States, anti-minority vigilante violence in India, and the governance of displaced populations and refugees in Lebanon and Turkey.
“Does cattle insurance reduce or increase violence between herders? What differentiates a school shooting that occurs from one that was prevented? What is it about psychopathic personality traits that elevates the risk of committing aggression and violence? How do prisons promote conflict between racial and ethnic groups? Each of our 2026 Emerging Scholars—all exceptional doctoral candidates—is asking a question whose answer will, we hope, help to reduce the misery caused by violence, as Harry Guggenheim intended in creating this foundation,” said HFG Director of Research Joel Wallman.
The awards are given to promising researchers in their final year of writing a doctoral dissertation that examines a salient aspect of violence. In selecting the awardees, HFG prioritizes research that addresses urgent, contemporary problems.
2026 Scholars and Research Topics
Karthika Baby Sujatha (United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology & Maastricht University) Understanding and Altering Men’s Attitudes, Tolerance, and Behaviors Towards Intimate Partner Violence: A Field Experiment in Kerala, India
Judith Hoppermann (SOAS, University of London) Governing Displacement, Contesting the State: Armed Transnational Movements, Refugees and Political Reordering in the Syrian Borderlands
Lindsay J. Lerner (John Jay College of Criminal Justice & The CUNY Graduate Center) Advancing School Safety: Comparing Completed & Averted School Shootings
Naomi Nero (Georgetown University) Valuing and Devaluing Others: Identifying Mechanisms Relevant to Predicting and Preventing Interpersonal Violence in Psychopathy
Enrique Olivares-Pelayo (University of Arizona) Running Raza: An Ethnography from Inside Arizona’s Prisons
Mayra Ortiz Ocana (University of Notre Dame) Gatekeeping Justice: Criminal Epistemologies in Prosecuting Organized Crime Violence
Emma Rikken (Wageningen University & Research) Drought, Rain, and Raiders: Testing Insurance and Edutainment Against Conflict in Africa
Aarushi Shah (Columbia University) Crime and Replenishment? An Ethnographic Study of the Remedial Work of a Domestic Violence Court in New York
Yash Sharma (University of Cincinnati) Majoritarianism and its Discontents: Violence, Mobilization and Resistance in Contemporary India
The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression.
For more information contact:
Halima Gikandi, Senior Communications Manager
info@hfg.org | 646.428.0973
Originally published at HFG.org on September 16, 2026.