Mette Brogden

Mette Brogden, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Practice in SBS/Graduate Programs in Human Rights Practice (HRTS).  She is a cultural and medical anthropologist who has overseen the resettlement of over 6,000 refugees to the U.S. while serving in leadership positions in government and NGOs. Her work has included refugee reception and placement, policy development, program administration, evaluation, and research on the refugee resettlement experience among refugees and receiving communities after 9-11.  Her previous careers were in environmental and public policy conflict resolution, and as a psychotherapist in community mental health centers.  She facilitated numerous multi-stakeholder policy-development processes across local, state, and national levels while managing the Environmental and Public Policy Conflict Resolution Program at UA’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.

Mette's research interests include international migration; trauma impacts and social healing from extreme violence, human rights violations and colonial legacies; environmental justice, rights of species and ecological systems; facilitation of multi-stakeholder policy development processes; how NGOs gain traction from start-up to scale-up; and developing communities of practice that provide social capital and collegial support among people working to address complex, intractable troubles.  Her current research site is in northern Ghana, with World Institute of Africa Culture and Traditions (WIACT), an indigenous education institute which focuses on documenting tribal elders’ knowledge. 

She holds an M.S.W. from Tulane University, M.A.s from The University of Iowa and The University of Arizona, and a Graduate Certificate in Refugee Trauma and Global Mental Health from Harvard Medical School.  She directed a refugee resettlement program at a social services agency in Tucson, and later served as the organizational mentor for three refugee-led mutual assistance/community-based non-profit organizations in Tucson and Texas.  She also provided national technical assistance for HIAS/U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement programs focused on refugee family strengthening.  Between 2010-2016 she served as the State Refugee Coordinator for the State of Wisconsin, taking a year out in Baltimore to serve as the Director of Program Evaluation at Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services.  She served as Deputy Director of the City of Seattle's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs from 2016-2017 before accepting an appointment with the HRTS program in 2017.  She currently teaches classes in human rights NGO management, migration, and Human Rights Crises & Trauma.