Professor Richards' work focuses on government respect for human rights. One of his primary interests is human rights measurement, and he is Co-Director (with David Cingranelli of SUNY Binghamton) of the CIRI Human Rights Data Project (www.humanrightsdata.org), which annually rates government respect for 15 internationally-recognized human rights in 195 countries.

He has published research studying government respect for human rights, broadly defined,  in a variety of journals and books. This research utilizes a variety of lenses through which to examine respect for human rights, including economic globalization, democratic institutions such as national elections and political parties, banking crises, the end of the Cold War, and information globalization. His most recent work examines the distribution and formation of citizen attitudes towards human rights, both worldwide and within the US context.

His work has been funded multiple times by the National Science Foundation and The World Bank, among others. Recently, Professor Richards was invited to sit on the advisory board for UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s Women: 2008 report.

Professor Richards teaches classes on comparative politics, international relations, research methods, and political film. He joined the faculty at the University of Memphis in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in 1999 from Binghamton University, SUNY.