Expertise
Civil Society, Nonprofits, Non-Governmental Organizations
Bio
Andrew Heiss is an assistant professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy Studies from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, an M.P.A. in Nonprofit Management from Brigham Young University and an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the American University in Cairo. From 2017 to 2019 he was a visiting professor at the Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics at Brigham Young University. Dr. Heiss studies the political and regulatory relationships between nonprofit organizations and governments. He explores how international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) influence and are influenced by legal institutions in their authoritarian host countries, and how nonprofit organizations can be effective under harsh anti-NGO laws. He is particularly interested in how human rights NGOs that deal with human trafficking, freedom of expression and other contentious issues maintain access to repressive regimes that violate these rights. His research has been published in the Journal of Politics, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, International Studies Review and the Journal of Human Trafficking. He has also published several book chapters about NGOs and authoritarianism and anti-NGO regulatory crackdowns. He received the 2016–2018 Emerging Scholar Dissertation Award from the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR).