The American Bar Foundation (ABF) has appointed Natacha Nsabimana and Alana Ackerman, both scholars in anthropology, to join its community as Research Professors beginning fall 2025. These scholars will join a robust community of researchers advancing understandings of law and society through empirical and interdisciplinary research.
The appointment of Nsabimana and Ackerman deepens the ABF’s relationship to the field of anthropology. The two scholars will join faculty who focus on a wide range of specializations within economics, law, sociology, and other fields.
These newly appointed Research Professors bring an array of expertise to the ABF. Their research interests cover such topics as refugee studies, migration, the law and subjectivity, genocide, and armed conflict, among other research areas. The researchers also bring a breadth of geographical diversity with their research specializations: Nsabimana’s work focuses on Africa and the African Diaspora; Ackerman’s work focuses on Ecuador, Colombia, and other countries in Latin America.
“It’s so exciting that Alana and Natacha will be joining the ABF faculty, bringing deep anthropological expertise to shed light on how law works in the real lives of people endangered by war, immigration, and precarity,” said ABF Research Professor Elizabeth Mertz. Mertz is a leading legal anthropologist and pioneer in the study of legal language in the United States, with a special focus on law school education. “The combination of innovative theory and intensive fieldwork that is typical of their research fits beautifully within the highest of ABF traditions—and our research faculty is excited to meet them!”
New Faculty Joining the ABF in Fall 2025
Natacha Nsabimana (she/her) has been appointed as a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. In a joint appointment, she is also an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Nsabimana’s research and teaching interests include law and subjectivity, postcolonial critique, musical movements and the cultural and political worlds of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. She is at work on a book manuscript which examines the everyday aftermath of violence in post-genocide Rwanda. Read more about Natacha Nsabimana here.
Alana Ackerman (she/her) has been appointed as a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Her current research examines armed conflict, violence, displacement, and the state across borders in the Global South. Her research interests include migration, asylum, and refuge; critical refugee studies; forced displacement and armed conflict; Latin America; Ecuador; and Colombia. Her current book project considers how refugees navigate violence and displacement in spaces of purported refuge. Read more about Alana Ackerman here.
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About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.