ALISON BRYSK is Chair and Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of eight books on human rights, democracy, global governance, social movements, gender rights, and Latin American politics. 

The latest study, Abortion Rights Backlash: The Struggle for Democracy in Europe and the Americas will be published by Oxford University Press. In Abortion Rights Backlash, Alison Brysk shows how threats to reproductive rights stem from a gendered political struggle over declining democracy, national identity, and widening inequality due to globalization. Brysk demonstrates that this is a global phenomenon, comparing the diverging experiences of the politics of abortion in Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (California vs. Texas).

Brysk has also edited numerous volumes, most recently Populism and Human Rights (Edward Elgar, 2023). Brysk has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center; Fulbright Professor in Canada, India, and at Oxford; Visiting Scholar in Argentina, Ecuador, Sweden, Japan, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, France, and Taiwan; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.