People

Benjamin Zawacki

Benjamin Zawacki is a Bangkok-based lawyer and researcher, and author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China (Zed Books and the University of Chicago Press, October 2017). He was a visiting fellow in the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School in 2014-15, where an early draft of his book was written, and a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations through 2016. He was Amnesty International’s Southeast Asia researcher for five years, and served as a policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Finland’s Martti Ahtisaari, and Norway’s Gro Harlem Brundtland in Myanmar in 2013. He has done other work with the UN Refugee Agency, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Asia Foundation. A member of the New York State Bar, he is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School and the College of the Holy Cross. He is a regular contributor to the media in Southeast Asia, and has lived in Thailand for 15 years.