Dr. Elizabeth Ferris is a Senior Fellow with ISIM and previously served as ISIM Director and Research Professor.  She joined ISIM in Fall 2015 after serving for 9 years as a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement. In 2016, she served as senior advisor to the UN Secretary-General in planning the Global Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants which led to the development of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration. From 2019-21, she served as one of four expert advisors to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement.

Prior to joining Brookings in November 2006, Elizabeth spent 20 years working in the field of international humanitarian response, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Council of Churches. She has also served as Chair of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), as Research Director for the Life & Peace Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, and Director of the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program in New York. She has been a professor at several U.S. universities and served as a Fulbright professor to the Universidad Autónoma de México in Mexico City. She has written or edited ten books and many articles on humanitarian and human rights issues which have been published in both academic and policy journals. Her current research interests focus on the politics of humanitarian action, global governance and internal displacement.

Selected Publications

Syrian Refugees in Türkiye: Prospects for Return or Integration.  2025. Policy Brief, Baker Institute for Public Policy.  https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/syrian-refugees-turkiye-prospects-return-or-integration

Transiting the Americas.  2024.  With Effi Holston, Katharine Donato and Angelo Rivero.  Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q5UIJfA3R7ppTzCP748ScHioAc4_wHEd/view 

Climate Change and Community Relocation. 2024.  Policy Brief, Baker Institute for Public Policy.  https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/climate-change-and-community-relocation 

Periodic Global Report on the State of Solutions on Internal Displacement (PROGRESS). 2024. With Katharine Donato and IOM colleagues.  International Organization for Migration. 2024.  https://dtm.iom.int/progress

Global Governance of Refugees and Migration: Unpacking the Global Compacts, with Katharine Donato, Routledge, 2019.

Consequences of Chaos:  Syrian Displacement and the Failure to Protect, with Kemal Kirisci, Brookings Institution Press, 2016.