Melanie Brazzell is a pre-doctoral fellow at the P3 Lab, where they are expanding their research with the Realizing Democracy Project on the intersections of movement structure and strategy in order to build out a case study library for the Lab. They also support the Momentum Community, a training institute and movement incubator, in integrating research and organizing as a founding member of the Momentum Research Council.

As a PhD student and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara, Melanie studies gender, critical criminology, and social movements. Melanie’s dissertation focuses on transformative justice alternatives to prison and policing, particularly for sexual and partner violence. Drawing on their involvement in the feminist anti-violence movement for over fifteen years in both the U.S. and Germany, Melanie’s participatory research and community engagement are housed within the “What Really Makes Us Safe?” Project.

Melanie is also passionate about pedagogy, having worked for eight years in Berlin as a teacher at a co-operative, democratic high school for non-traditional adult students that won the Bosch Foundation’s second place prize for best school in Germany in 2016. Melanie received a Bachelor’s from Columbia University and a Master’s from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.