Ari Shaw is Senior Fellow and Director of International Programs at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. His research and policy work focus on the intersection of LGBTQ+ rights and global politics, with particular attention to democratic backsliding and resilience, inclusive development, climate change, and migration. He has collaborated with the U.S. State Department, USAID, the World Bank, the United Nations, and a wide range of governmental, private sector, and civil society partners.

His academic writing has appeared in the Oxford Handbook on International Law in the Americas and the African Human Rights Law Journal, while his commentary and analysis have been published in Foreign Affairs, CNN, NPR, The Washington Post, World Politics Review, and El Espectador. He frequently speaks on LGBTQ+ rights, democracy, and U.S. foreign policy at national and international forums.

Before joining the Williams Institute, he held positions at Columbia University, the Gill Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations Association of the USA. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and a Multirights Fellow at the Norwegian Centre on Human Rights in Oslo. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University, an M.Sc. in international relations from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in government from Harvard University.