Elena LesleyCohort 2014

• MS, Global Affairs, Rutgers University
• BA, Brown University

I am currently writing my dissertation manuscript about mental health interventions among survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of roughly 1.7-million Cambodians from 1975-1979. My interests include psychological and medical anthropology, global health, post-conflict recovery, political anthropology, gender-based violence and genocide studies.



Since I first traveled to Cambodia in 2004, my work in the country has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a Fulbright fellowship, the Blakemore Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation, among others. The results of my research have appeared in Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, the journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention, the U.K. literary magazine Granta, Necropolitics and Remembering Genocide. 

I have a BA from Brown University and an MS from Rutgers University. Before coming to Emory, I worked as a journalist in the U.S. and abroad, and also as a Senior Research Specialist at Princeton University. 

In the 2020-2021 academic year, I served as a Dean's Teaching Fellow in the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence. 

Advisor: Dr. Knauft