Hardy Merriman is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and is a principal investigator for the Atlantic Council’s joint Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave project with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Currently, his research focuses on international support to nonviolent civil resistance movements fighting for rights, freedom, and justice.

Merriman has worked in the field of civil resistance for over nineteen years, presenting at workshops for activists and organizers around the world; developing programs and grantmaking for practitioners and scholars; publishing commentary; and speaking widely about civil resistance movements with academics, journalists, and members of international organizations. His writings have been translated into numerous languages.

He is also president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), at which he leads the Civil Resistance Funders Initiative focusing on the role of philanthropy and international advocacy organizations in supporting movements.

Previously he served as ICNC’s president and chief executive officer from January 2015 until June 2021, as well as vice president and director of content development from 2012 to 2014, as senior advisor from 2007 to 2012, and as director of programs and research from 2005 to 2007.

Mr. Merriman is primary author of the publication Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat (2023). Other recent publications include co-authoring the book Glossary of Civil Resistance: A Resource for Study and Translation of Key Terms (2021) and the report Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance (2019).

Previously he contributed to the books Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? (2015); Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East (2010); Nonviolence: An Alternative for Countering Global Terror(ism) (2007); and Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (2005); co-authored two literature reviews on civil resistance; and co-wrote A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle (2007), a training curriculum for activists.

He is an editor at the blog Minds of the Movement and a member of the Advisory Committee of the War Prevention Initiative.