Bethel resident, photo-journalist, educator, activist, and author, nominated for the Nobel Prize for her work on behalf of the Hmong people of Laos.

Born near Fort Wayne and raised on farms in Ohio and Indiana, Hamilton-Merritt received her bachelor's and master's degree in history and English from Ball State University, and a Ph.D. in Southeast Asia studies at Union Institute in Cincinnati. She worked as a free-lance war correspondent in Vietnam for six years, taught journalism at Southern Connecticut State University from 1979 to 1997, and was a visiting faculty fellow at Yale University from 1991-1992. In 1969 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a series on young soldiers, in 1980 her article in Reader's Digest broke the story of chemical and biological warfare in Laos, and in 1993 Indiana University Press published Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret War for Laos, 1942-1992 , the highly acclaimed book she had been working on for 14 years. In 1998 Hamilton-Merritt was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her tireless efforts on behalf of the Hmong people.

For almost 25 years Hamilton-Merritt has documented the Hmong story in books, magazines, and newspaper articles. She has testified before Congress and traveled throughout the country to raise public awareness of the plight of these former allies. She has also worked as a cultural advisor to school systems with significant numbers of Hmong refugee children and has brought an exhibit of their art and culture to museums throughout Connecticut. From 1982 to 1985 Hamilton-Merritt served as a consultant to the US Department of State's Ambassador-at-large for Refugees. Since 1991 she has worked to stop the involuntary repatriation of Hmong political refugees from camps in Thailand back to Laos, a move she argues would doom thousands to slavery or execution. In 1997 she resigned from her tenured teaching position to work full-time for resettlement of 20,000 Hmong living in a Buddhist compound north of Bangkok, most of whose families now reside in the US. She also serves as co-editor of the Vietnam War Era Classics series.

More than 100 individuals and organizations from several countries supported Hamilton-Merritt's nomination for the peace prize, including 10 members of Congress and three former US ambassadors. As Burke Marshall of Yale Law School wrote, “They (the Hmong) are a people who have been deeply damaged and wronged by history and by the actions of great nations. . . and for whom there is no compensation, no recourse except for the inexplicable intervention of the exceptional, virtually unique, voice and body of Dr. Jane Hamilton-Merritt.”