Elen Aghekyan

She is an MA candidate at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale, where she focuses on the intersection of disinformation and democratic resilience. Elen is interested in how communities around the world are confronting unique vulnerabilities to disinformation, including through media literacy and civic education. She began her career at the democracy watchdog Freedom House, where she was a research analyst for the organization’s flagship Freedom in the World report as well as special research on modern authoritarianism, with a regional focus on Eurasia. She received her BA in history and government, summa cum laude, from Cornell University. Elen grew up between Armenia and the United States, and is a fan of long-distance running, crosswords, and languages. She is a native speaker of Armenian and Russian and has a working knowledge of German. If you are wondering how to pronounce her name, it is EH-len (like Ellen) ah-GEK-yahn.