Politics Faculty

AB, Stanford University. AM, PhD, Harvard University. Fellow at the Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University; member of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Program on Inequality and Social Policy; research fellow with Harvard’s Canada Program. Main topics of research include social policy, inequality, international political economy, and comparative and American politics; special interest in network analysis, the media, Congress, political behavior, urban studies and cities, public opinion and survey research, political communication and elections, and the social nature of political behavior; conducted fieldwork throughout Europe and North America. Two substantial projects are presently in progress: a comparative, historical study to understand political participation in Western democracies (i.e., Why do some people vote, while others do not?) and an examination of American political culture and the nature of centrism and polarization in the United States. SLC, 2010–

BS, Economics, University of Houston. BA, Creative Writing, University of Arizona. MA and PhD, Geography, University of Washington. Research interests include the role of social movements in political formation, the geopolitics of the “war on drugs” in the Western Hemisphere, transnational governance and state repression, biopolitics and hegemonic strategy, and the political economy of commodity chains. Substantive regional focus on Latin America. Recently published in Political Geography and ACME. SLC, 2009–

BA, Barnard College. PhD, Graduate Center, City University of New York. Research and teaching interests include ethnic conflict, ethnofederalism, political parties and electoral systems in multinational states, constitutional and electoral engineering, American constitutional law, and, more broadly, American political development. Recent awards include Fulbright/IIE Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship and the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship. Conducted field research in Russia. Taught courses in Comparative and American Politics at City University of New York-Hunter College and Baruch College. SLC, 2012–

BA, Occidental College. DPhil, Oxford University. Special interests in democracy in conditions of cultural diversity, social complexity and political dispersal, critical social theory, social contract theory, radical democratic thought, and the idea of dispersed but integrated public spheres that create the social and institutional space for broad-based, direct participation in democratic deliberation and decision-making; recipient of a Marshal Scholarship; taught at Harvard University, Deep Springs College, and Dartmouth College; visiting scholar at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and the London School of Economics. SLC, 2000–

AB, Duke University. MSt, Oxford University. MPhil, City University of New York Graduate Center. Research interests include migration, human rights, citizenship, transnationalism, refugee protection and asylum, humanitarian relief, and international law. Current research project examines the Liberian diaspora’s civic engagement in both the United States and in the process of post-conflict peacebuilding in Liberia, paying particular attention to the role of migration and state policies in influencing civic participation in each country. Worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey and Guinea and Save the Children Foundation in Ethiopia. SLC, 2012–  

AB, Colgate University. MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University. Research interests include social movements in new democracies, popular responses to poverty and inequality, violence in democratization processes, collective memory, memorials and reconciliation. Regional specialization: sub-Saharan Africa; extensive fieldwork in South Africa and research in Namibia. Author of The Politics of Necessity: Community Organizing and Democracy in South Africa, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. Recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Amherst College and a Lowenstein fellowship; articles in Democratization, Comparative Politics, Politique Africaine, African Affairs, South African Labour Bulletin, Transformation, and African Studies Review. SLC, 2002–