Dr. Barratt earned her PhD from the University of California in 2002, and her BA in Political Science/History from Duke University in 1994. She is Director of the Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project, which is a unique undergraduate human rights research program. Focusing on a constellation of related challenges to human rights, our students have the opportunity to learn from leaders in the field in Chicago and abroad, before engaging in comparative policy analysis, which we publish on our website (http://www.roosevelt.edu/CAS/CentersAndInstitutes/Loundy.aspx). Students have the opportunity to then participate in internships that allow them to work directly in their field of study. Recent foci include wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice (the 2010-11 theme) drug policy, and police use of excessive force.
Professor Barratt has conducted archival and field research in Central Asia, the UK, Canada, and Australia. She is author of Human Rights and Foreign Aid (Routledge, 2007), The Politics of Harry Potter (Palgrave McMillan, 2011), coeditor of Public Opinion and War: Lessons from Iraq (Potomac, 2011), and editor of Human Rights Since 9/11: A Sourcebook (Open Society Foundation, Forthcoming). She has also authored articles on human rights, foreign aid, US, British, Canadian, and Australian foreign policy, and counterterrorism, in Political Research Quarterly, The Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and edited volumes from Ashgate and Lexington. Besides teaching at Roosevelt and the University of California, she has also taught in a number of jails and prisons.
She is an officer or member of several scholarly associations including the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association, the Women’s Caucus for International Studies, and the Midwest Political Science Association. She also edits the H-Net Human Rights List.
For three years she was the campus coordinator of annual benefit productions of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, which raises funds for local anti-domestic violence organizations.