Rachel Bowen

Rachel E. Bowen is a Faculty Fellow and assistant director of The Women’s Place. Rachel is passionate about women’s rights and building equitable and inclusive universities. She joined The Ohio State University in 2008 on the Mansfield Campus, where she has served as a member of the Executive Committee and as the Mansfield Campus’ representative to the University Senate. She also serves as the 2019-2020 chair of the Diversity Committee of the University Senate.

Rachel is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, where she researches and teaches comparative politics, legal politics, and gender and politics. The common thread in Rachel’s academic work is the construction of institutions and practices to serve justice. She is the author of The Achilles Heel of Democracy: Judicial Autonomy and the Rule of Law in Central America (2017). Her current book project traces organized feminist anti-violence activism in Central America in an environment of shrinking political opportunities. An additional research project in progress analyzes interviews tracing the political participation and participation in the legal system of women survivors of criminal violence in Central America in order to identify best practices for women’s empowerment in high-violence environments.  Rachel’s research is supported by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Rachel is an alumna of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a small, experimental liberal arts college. She earned her JD and her PhD at Georgetown University.