A Closer Look: Kelebogile “Kelly” Zvobgo ’14, 2024 Inspirational Young Alumni Award Recipient

photo of zvogbo 2024 alumni award winner — “All roads lead back to Pomona,” says Kelly Zvobgo ’14.

Friday, July 19, 2024

Already an accomplished and well-respected scholar in human rights, transitional justice, and international law and courts, Kelebogile "Kelly" Zvobgo ’14 is the 2024 Inspirational Young Alumni Award recipient. Read her story in our summer series "A Closer Look", featuring the 2024 Alumni Award winners. Zvobgo was honored along with Alumni Distinguished Service Award winners Friday, April 26, at the All-Class Dinner on Marston Quad during Alumni Weekend 2024.

In the short decade since her graduation, Kelebogile “Kelly” Zvobgo ’14 has proven herself an accomplished scholar, teacher, mentor and changemaker. Zvobgo has received international recognition for her research on human rights, law and justice. Her work has appeared in and mainstream outlets such as CNN, NPR, Foreign Affairs and The Washington Post, and been featured in reports by the UN and NATO. She is currently an assistant professor of government at the College of William & Mary. Starting this fall, she will be a tenured associate professor. She is also the founder and director of the .

Three Questions

How has your �鶹��ý experience played a role in where you are today?

Pomona prepared me in so many ways for my job now. First, my professors always made me feel like my voice and my ideas mattered, and that I had something unique to contribute. That gave me the confidence to become a scholar in my own right. Second, my advisors, in both the International Relations and French programs, made invaluable investments in my professional development and success—helping me work through my research ideas, recommending me for different study and research opportunities abroad, nominating me for awards, writing letters to support my Ph.D. program applications, networking me into the profession—the list goes on. Critically, they taught me that research and teaching go hand in hand, and that professors can really influence someone’s life trajectory. I am working to do the same for my students at William & Mary which, like Pomona, combines the best of scholarly research and the best of teaching and student mentorship. Third, my Pomona family taught me, time and again, that everything falls into place when you put people first. That’s been grounding and centering for me.

What is your favorite Pomona memory?

One of my strongest Pomona memories: When I started working on my senior thesis in International Relations (supervised by Heidi Haddad and Pierre Englebert), Pierre asked me if the data I would need to answer my research question existed/were available. “No data, no thesis,” he said. I’ll never forget those four words (and ten years later, I’ve repeated them to my own students!). Over the next few days, I located and read the final reports of dozens of truth commissions, and managed to extract needed data. Phew! Triumphant, I came to class with news of my successful data quest. Pierre was pleasantly surprised, “Wow, that was so fast!” I had mistaken “No data, no thesis” as “Go find this data ASAP.” Whoops! In any case, it was the start of a now decade-long journey of original data collection efforts to answer questions of concern and urgency in human rights, the broader international relations field, and the political science discipline.

What advice do you have for current Pomona students?

Study a foreign language while in college and study abroad, ideally for a year. Intercultural understanding and engagement are so important in our world today. And think about all of the wonderful people you will meet, monuments you will see, and food you will eat! Be flexible! I had everything planned out and still everything changed at the eleventh hour. And I am so glad it did!

Know yourself and your values and don’t compromise on them. Be you, boldly and unapologetically.

“I don’t know where to start in expressing how much �鶹��ý means to me and how honored I am to receive the Inspirational Young Alumni Award,” Zvobgo said. “My professors nurtured my curiosity about the world, from how countries rebuild in the wake of political violence to paradoxes in Enlightenment philosophy. My classmates and I debated important ideas as we developed our social and political consciousness. Co-curricular activities like study abroad increased the aperture of my worldview. Mentored research experiences showed me I could be a scholar. All roads lead back to Pomona.”

After graduating from Pomona with a B.A. in International Relations and French Language and Literature, Zvobgo spent a year volunteering with an international nonprofit in London before returning to the U.S. to pursue her Ph.D. in political science and international relations at the University of Southern California (USC). At USC, Zvobgo was awarded the Provost Fellowship in the Social Sciences, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and the 2021 USC Ph.D. Achievement Award. The American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association also awarded her Best Paper in Human Rights in 2019 and Best Dissertation in Human Rights in 2022.

In nominating Zvobgo, Associate Professor of Politics Heidi Haddad said “Kelly epitomizes the best of a scholar-teacher. She is pushing the bounds of knowledge production on human rights and transitional justice, is translating that into broad understanding, and bringing that knowledge and experience back to the classroom and through her research lab.”

“I have no doubt that within a decade she will be the best-known U.S. author in her area of scholarship. Dr. Zvobgo has just earned tenure after only two years of teaching at William and Mary College.” said Professor of Politics Heather Williams in her nomination.

Zvobgo celebrated her 10th reunion with the Class of 2024 at Alumni Weekend this past spring.

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