The Team

Rhonda L. Evans has directed the Clark Center since 2012. A scholar of comparative law and politics, she studies how courts and human rights institutions shape public policy, promote accountability, and sustain the rule of law, with particular attention to Australia and New Zealand. She is the author of Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe (Oxford University Press, with Terri E. Givens), and her work has appeared in the Policy Studies Journal, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, the Australian Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. From 2021 to 2025 she served as Convenor of the International Political Science Association's Research Committee on Comparative Judicial Studies. A lawyer by training, she holds a B.A. from Kent State University's Honors College, a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Government from UT Austin.

Christine C. Bird is an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. Her research lies at the intersection of law and politics. Her upcoming book project examines the Office of the Solicitor General’s defensive behavior in Supreme Court agenda setting (certiorari) dynamics. She specializes in how law interacts with public policy, judicial politics, socio-legal movements, and constitutional law. Her research has been published in Political Research Quarterly, Interest Groups & Advocacy, American Politics Research, Journal of Law and Courts, Urban Affairs Review, and Polity and featured in 3Streams and the New Books Political Science Podcast. Christine is an Associate Director with the Policy Agendas Project and a faculty research associate with the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies. She also directs the Bird Law and Public Policy Research Lab.

Sierra Rowe earned her B.A. in Government and Master of Public Affairs from The University of Texas at Austin, with involvement in the Edward A. Clark Center spanning both degrees, first as a Clark Scholar in 2017, then as a West Scholar in 2023. During this time, she built datasets evaluating media coverage of New Zealand Supreme Court decisions and managed several projects concerning the Australian Human Rights Commission and the New Zealand Supreme Court. She now continues to support the Clark Center as a visiting researcher while also working as a Senior Research Associate at the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University.