Lena Habtu is a student at Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pennsylvania), pursuing an Honors Special Major in Political Sociology with minors in Arabic Studies and Computer Science. Born in Ethiopia, Lena’s research interests lie in ethnic cohesion, intra-state conflict, and how African states politically accommodate multiethnicity. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, she is conducting independent research on the role of linguistic plurality and cultural heterogeneity in building national identities throughout post-colonial Africa. At ACCORD, she will be interning with the research team, focusing on the Red Sea arena (the Horn of Africa and the Gulf), leveraging her multilingual approach to enhance her research.
