Adam Lichtenheld
Senior Conflict Analyst and Advisor
USAID
Former IPL Executive Director
Email: alich@stanford.edu
About
Adam is Senior Conflict Analyst and Advisor at USAID and author of Guilt by Location: Forced Displacement and Population Sorting in Civil Wars. As IPL’s executive director, he provided strategic vision and research management, while building the lab’s unique partnerships. He also designed and guided the experiential training that IPL provides for postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates at Stanford. During his tenure at IPL, Adam brought wide-ranging experience working at the nexus between policy and research on migration and some of its underlying causes, including conflict and violence.
Adam received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and he is an affiliated scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. He has published various studies on forced displacement, conflict, and evidence-based interventions in journals such as International Organization, the British Journal of Political Science, Political Geography, and Economics & Politics, along with media outlets like the Washington Post and Foreign Policy. Prior to joining IPL, Adam led research teams and projects for the humanitarian NGO Mercy Corps; served as a senior conflict advisor for the World Bank; taught courses on migration and conflict at Berkeley and Yale University; and worked as a research analyst for USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives in Syria. His approach to research, leadership, and management is informed by his deep policy engagement and close collaboration with local researchers, non-profits, and displaced populations in more than a dozen countries.
