About

Dr. Alexandra Cosima Budabin (born 1978) studied art history, history, social thought and humanities at Harvard University and New York University. Her undergraduate thesis looked Holocaust commemoration in Berlin and her Master’s thesis explored refugees through the lens of global citizenship. She held the Leon Milman Memorial Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. Dr. Budabin received her doctorate in Politics from the New School for Social Research in 2012. She is a Senior Researcher at the Human Rights Center of the University of Dayton. She is Assegno di Ricerca at the Platform Cultural Heritage Cultural Production of the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bolzano.Previously, Dr. Budabin was an Assegno di Ricerca in the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bolzano (Italy) for the project “The Uses of Art in the Public Domain and the Politics of Heritage (Politage)” with PIs Roberto Farneti and Andrea di Michele (Free University of Bolzano).

Her research on non-state actors in human rights, humanitarianism and development has appeared in Perspective on Politics, New Political Science, Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Human Rights, Humanity, and Third World Quarterly. Her first book Batman Saves the Congo: How Celebrities Disrupt the Politics of Development with Lisa A. Richey is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press. She is Co-I in the research project Commodifying Compassion: Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things (2016-2022) based at Copenhagen Business School (PI Lisa A. Richey). Dr. Budabin’s current research looks at transnational advocacy on behalf of sexual violence in conflict; digital solidarity for refugees; and museum activism.