Biography

Samuel Ritholtz's work lies at the intersections of comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. They completed their DPhil and MSc at the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre and their BSc at Cornell University. They have held visiting research fellowships at Hertie School (Centre for International Security) in Berlin, and at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. Samuel has worked for the United Nations, in the Executive Office of the Secretary General, as well as for human rights organizations in Washington DC and Buenos Aires.

Samuel's research centres marginalized social groups in studies of contentious politics. Their doctoral dissertation investigated collective violence against LGBTIQ+ people during the Colombian civil war and tied these dynamics to wartime social transformation processes. At the EUI, they will continue to explore the roles of marginality, brutality, and spectacle during the Colombian civil war – with a renewed focus on the concept of 'social cleansing'.

At the EUI, Samuel will pursue a secondary research interest in LGBTIQ+ displacement from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. They will complete their co-authored manuscript Toward a Queer Theory of Refuge for the University of California Press. And they will finish a collaborative, SSHRC-funded field project on the lives of LGBTIQ+ Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Brazil.

Samuel has served as a lecturer for Somerville College, the University of Oxford, and Stanford University.