Savannah J. Morris is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations with a regional focus in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Her academic research, policy experience, as well as her direct engagement with North Korea defectors drive her commitment to human rights advocacy. Through this work, she aims to raise global awareness and inform international policy. To deepen her understanding of these dynamics, she spent the 2025 Fall semester abroad at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College in Seoul, focusing her coursework on inter-Korean relations and peninsular security with the support of the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship and the Critical Language Scholarship for Korean. She plans to pursue a PhD in Political Science, focusing her doctoral research on Comparative Politics and East Asian security dynamics. She is particularly interested in examining the intersection of military security and environmental degradation, exploring how these combined pressures influence regional stability and impact human rights outcomes in the East Asia and Pacific region.

Her interest in North Korean human rights advocacy was profoundly shaped during her time in Seoul, where volunteered as an English tutor with Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and Freedom Speakers International (FSI), working directly with North Korean defectors. At HRNK, Savannah plans to further research the intersection of artificial intelligence, state surveillance technology, and information blockades to analyze their evolving threat to human rights in North Korea. Ultimately, she hopes this research will help uncover new pathways to break the regime’s information monopoly, championing the rights of the North Korean people inside the country while empowering defector communities abroad.