ROBERTA BUFFETT INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROGRAM

Matej is a PhD Candidate in Political Science (Comparative Politics) at Northwestern University with a long-standing research interest in issues of territorial conflict, forced displacement, and refugee agency. During his undergraduate studies at Beloit College, Matej compared the agency and political representation of displaced people in Azerbaijan and Palestine through fieldwork in both regions. In his master’s studies at Princeton University, Matej served as editor-in-chief of a policy report for Mercy Corps and IOM that investigated the experiences with refugee returns in Colombia, Nigeria and Liberia. In his PhD dissertation, Matej studies the long-term legacies of territorial loss and forced displacement in a comparative perspective across Czechoslovakia, Finland and Armenia. Matej is an adopted son of Milwaukee in the great state of Wisconsin. In his free time, Matej likes to rock climb with his son, throw baseball or camp and hike, preferably in the Upper Midwest.