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. Recent publications in Political Geography and ACME. SLC, 2009—

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–

BA, MA, University of Munich, Germany. MPhil, PhD candidate, Columbia University. Special interests include Islamic and Western political thought, comparative politics of the Middle East, social movements in the Middle East, and Iranian studies. Recent awards include Columbia University Contemporary Civilization Preceptorship Award (2008-10), Columbia University Multi-Year Faculty Fellowship (2003-2010), Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Summer Teaching Scholars Award (2008), Margaret Abdel-Ahad Pennar Fellowship (2006-2007), and the Andrew W. Mellon and John W. Kluge Endowment for a New Generation of Faculty Excellence Fellowship (2006). Courses on the Middle East and political theory taught at Columbia University, Drew University, and City University of New York—Queens College. Defended dissertation in September 2010 on “State, Dissidents, and Contention: Iran 1989-2010.” SLC, 2010—

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–