Park Welcomes Political Scientist Hahrie Han as 2026 Resident Scholar
Yesterday, we welcomed political scientist and Park parent Hahrie Han to campus as our 2026 Resident Scholar. Han is the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, and the Faculty Director of the P3 Research Lab, all at Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in the study of organizing, movements, collective action, civic engagement, and democracy.
Han began the day presenting in an Upper School assembly, after being introduced by her daughter Kaya Gehlbach, an alumna from the Class of 2025 who is currently a student at Brown University. Han spoke about her journey into political science and shared interesting data about common misconceptions of civic engagement in the real world. Senior Sia R. and junior Owen G. led a panel to dive deeper into Han’s work and beliefs. The discussions continued in two sessions throughout the day, with focuses on Storytelling in Action and Organizing Social Movements. Students asked questions and engaged in activities about the research and reality of social justice and change, the importance of building community for collective action, and much more.
An award-winning author of five books and numerous scholarly articles, her latest book, Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church (Knopf, 2024), about faith and race in America with a focus on evangelical megachurches, was named to the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of the Year in 2024 and the New Yorker’s list of Recommended Books for 2024. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was named a 2022 Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation. This past October, Han was named a recipient of a 2025 MacArthur Fellowship. The award, often called a genius grant, is given annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals,” a mix of visual artists and writers, scientists and scholars.
Read more about our Visiting Scholars program here.
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