Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann is a Canadian social scientist who specializes in international human rights. Biography Howard-Hassmann was born Rhoda Howard in Scotland. Her mother (Mary Byrne) was Scottish, her father (Helmut Hassmann, later Michael Howard) was a refugee from Nazi Germany. She was brought to Canada at a young age and attended public schools in Quebec and southern Ontario. She is married and the mother of one son, born in 1981. In 1999 she changed her legal name from Rhoda E. Howard to Rhoda E. Hassmann, but she publishes her academic work as Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann. She has lived in Hamilton, Ontario since 1976. Education Howard-Hassmann attended four high schools: T.A. Blakelock (Oakville, Ontario); Bell High School (Ottawa, Ontario): Ripley District High School (Ripley, Ontario); and Stanford Collegiate and Vocational Institute (Niagara Falls, Ontario). She attended McGill University from 1965 to 1976, earning a BA in Political Science (1969), an MA in Sociology (1972), and a PhD in Sociology (1976). Her master's supervisor was Donald Von Eschen and her doctoral supervisor was Immanuel Wallerstein. Career Howard-Hassmann taught in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary for one year (1975–76), after which she spent 27 years (1976-2003) as a professor in the Department of Sociology, McMaster University. She originated and directed McMaster's now-defunct undergraduate minor Theme School on International Justice and Human Rights (1993–99), one of the world's first undergraduate non-law programs in human rights. From 2003 to 2016, Dr. Howard-Hassmann held a Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. There she held a joint appointment in the Department of Global Studies and the Balsillie School of International Affairs until 2014, when her appointment changed to the School of International Policy and Governance (part of the Balsillie School) and the Department of Political Science. She retired in 2017. Howard-Hassmann has held several visiting research and teaching appointments. She conducted doctoral research in Ghana in 1974 and 1977 for her book, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Ghana (1978). She was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, South Africa in August 1992, and she was visiting scholar at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, University of Utrecht, from July through December 2000. She was Marsha Lilien Gladstein Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the University of Connecticut (2001); James Farmer Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the