2000 – Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink

Margaret E. Keck, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., looks at political issues from the perspective of a political scientist, a journalist and former resident of several different nations.

She taught political science at Yale University from 1986 to 1995, and before that served as a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

During the mid- to late-1970s, she lived in Europe, working as a freelance journalist in Lisbon and as a program assistant for the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels.

Her 1992 book, “The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil,” published by Yale University Press, won the 1993 Best Book Prize from the New England Council on Latin American studies.

She has won several awards to support her research on environmental politics in Brazil, including the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize in 1993, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1991-92, and grants from the Howard Heinz Endowment and University of Pittsburgh Center for Latin American Studies and Social Science Research Council.

Kathryn Sikkink, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, recently completed a research project on the international human rights movement and the evolution of human rights norms. “The Power of Human Rights,” co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen C. Ropp, was published in 1999 by Cambridge University Press.

Besides serving on the Social Science Research Council/McArthur Foundation Committee on International Peace and Security, she belongs to the editorial board of the journal International Organization and the international advisory board of the journal International Studies Review.

Sikkink was a visiting fellow at the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University from 1986 to 1988. Before that, she was a visiting researcher at the Instituto Universitaria de Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Her first book, “Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina,” was published in 1991 by Cornell University Press. She also co-edited “The Power of Human Rights,” a book published earlier this year by Cambridge University Press.

Both Keck and Sikkink have conducted extensive field research in several countries, particularly in Latin America. They decided to collaborate on “Activists Beyond Borders” after comparing their respective research results in environmental politics and human rights and discovering similar patterns.