Jean Geran

Jean M. Geran is a human rights practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in international affairs, policy formulation and implementation, and impact analysis. She has a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the UW-Madison and has spent the better part of the past twenty years serving in a variety of capacities in the State Department: as a Foreign Affairs office responsible for implementing democracy and human rights policies, as an advisor on United Nations reform, and as a human rights and human trafficking policy planner in the Office of the Secretary of State.

Jean Geran was a Spring 2018 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and taught a topic course for International Studies, International Studies 401: “Emerging human rights in East and Southeast Asia.” The course was structured around advocacy approaches and tools used by a range of actors involved in promoting human rights in East and Southeast Asia with basic human rights frameworks, key thematic and emerging issues in Asian human rights, points of leverage, and how various advocacy tools can be effectively applied to specific human rights situations in specific countries. Distinguished Visiting Lecturers provide a practitioner’s perspective on current affairs by teaching special topics courses, hosting public events, engaging with faculty, and sharing in the intellectual life of the university.

Jean Geran is a Co-Director of the 4W anti-trafficking initiative, ‘Social Transformations to End Exploitation and Trafficking for Sex.’