Tamar Hayrikyan

Tamar specializes in designing and facilitating participatory research methods for the defense of human rights. She has led multidisciplinary and multicultural teams in applied research on a range of issues, including enforced disappearances, attacks against land rights defenders, gender-based impacts of the extractive industries, and impunity for killings of journalists.

Born in Moscow, Tamar grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts. She earned her undergraduate degree in Government from Harvard College, where she was also a student in the Harvard Law School Honors Undergraduate Program in Human Rights Theory in Practice. After graduating, Tamar spent two years working with civil society initiatives promoting peace and human rights in Nagorno Karabakh, a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where she was also a consultant with the International Crisis Group. Upon earning a Masters in International Political Economy through a dual degree program between the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and Sciences Po-Paris, Tamar settled in Mexico City. As Research Coordinator of a regional corporate accountability organization, she led in the design and implementation of community-driven Human Rights Impact Assessments of mining projects in Mexico. She later co-founded a social enterprise that advises grassroots organizations on documentation and analysis, protection of human rights defenders and journalists, information security, organizational strengthening and coalition building.

Tamar speaks Russian, Armenian, English, French and Spanish.