Shannon Golden, Ph.D.

Shannon Golden provides program evaluation and research support for CVT’s direct service programs in Africa and the Middle East. She has been a research associate with CVT since 2015. She has a range of current research interests at CVT, including:

• Understanding interconnections between individual and collective healing after trauma
• Elaborating relationships between healing, justice, and documentation after human rights abuses
• Assessing patterns in refugee mental health needs using representative survey methodology
• Predicting variation in treatment outcomes of clients in CVT’s international programs
• Identifying causes and consequences of public opinion about torture
• Developing outcome measures for child and family trauma rehabilitation interventions
• Measuring network connections between anti-torture organizations

Shannon received her PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota, where her dissertation research focused on how recently resettled communities in northern Uganda build social cohesion and trust, manage conflict, and experience transitional justice mechanisms in the wake of forced displacement and widespread atrocities. She held previous research positions at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. A coauthored book from that collaboration was released in 2017, titled Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South.