The University of Chicago

dabebe@uchicago.edu

Jessica Ruth Alms began the Ph.D. program in Political Science in Fall 2010, and her primary and secondary subfields of study are International Relations and Political Theory. She previously attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate concentrating in International Studies (A.B. 2004). After college she attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D. 2007) and practiced law alongside her father in the Chicago metropolitan area.

jralms@uchicago.edu

milenaang@uchicago.edu

kapostolides@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
History of Political Thought (both textualist and contextualist approaches), including 18th and 19th century French/British thought (especially Rousseau and J.S. Mill); contemporary democratic theory; theories of representation, accountability, and agency; mass-eliterelations.

arlen@uchicago.edu

arzuaga@uchicago.edu

meashley@uchicago.edu

basif@uchicago.edu

bass@uchicago.edu

dbenson@uchicago.edu

Christopher Berk's research interests include the philosophy, politics, and intellectual history of punishment, political and social theory, social movements, law & society, courts, and legal realism.

chrisberk@uchicago.edu

home.uchicago.edu/~chrisberk/

westsethberlin@uchicago.edu

sbevel@uchicago.edu

bilgel@uchicago.edu

Amanda Blair’s concentrations are Comparative Politics, Political Theory, and Methodology. Her areas of interest include gender politics, African politics, armed conflict, and sexual violence.

amandahelenb@uchicago.edu

Jacob Blecher is a third-year with a special interest in the study of "work and welfare," both as it animates social and political theory and informs everyday politics (especially in Denmark, for some reason). He came to the University of Chicago from Yale, where he studied philosophy.

jblecher@uchicago.edu

mbloom@uchicago.edu

amburkeen@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
International Relations and Comparative Politics; ethnic conflict and secession; alliances in civil and interstate wars; anarchy and hierarchy in IR theory.

ahsanib@uchicago.edu

acampi@uchicago.edu

Barnard Choi's interests include positive political economy and the application of its methods to the study of international relations. He holds an A.M (Honors) in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a BBA (Honours) in Finance and a BA in Political Science from Simon Fraser University, Canada.

bkchoi@uchicago.edu

jchoi5@uchicago.edu

stcochran@uchicago.edu

jaycost@uchicago.edu

adamdean@uchicago.edu

ccdeis@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Political theory, human rights theory, theories of rights and equality, critical race theory, African-American political thought.

jdobard@uchicago.edu

jdonnell@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Comparative politics and international political economy: Islamic economics, finance and global business; Islamic law and politics; political economy of terrorism; politics of multinational corporations; regional integration and cooperation.

ellisk@uchicago.edu

Amir Fairdosi’s research interests cover American politics and political theory. More specifically, he is interested in institutional measures designed to make the levers of government more accessible to ordinary citizens. This interest currently manifests itself in the form of research on representation, ballot initiative reform, and direct democracy. He also happens to be a professional magician.

His website address is www.Fairdosi.com.

amirfairdosi@uchicago.edu

sfenner@uchicago.edu

ford1@uchicago.edu

sgalloway@uchicago.edu

gerzhoy@uchicago.edu

minniego@uchicago.edu

rgoel@uchicago.edu

algonzalez@uchicago.edu

grac@uchicago.edu

djgrant@uchicago.edu

jmg@uchicago.edu

eguerrer@uchicago.edu

haid@uchicago.edu

khan@uchicago.edu

Jaira J. Harrington is a doctoral student at the University of Chicago specializing in the field of Comparative Politics. A West Side Chicago native, she earned her B.A. in Political Science from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. Her general research interests include Brazilian politics, legal theory, race and ethnicity, gender, and marginalized groups. Her current research focuses on law, labor and identity politics in Brazil with respect to Paid Household Domestic Work.

jharrington@uchicago.edu

apharris@uchicago.edu

Jose Antonio Hernandez Company is a PhD student in Political Science. His area of specialization is Comparative Politics – with a regional focus on Latin America. His main research interest is the study of political parties’ electoral strategies and their effect on accountability and representation in this region (particularly in Mexico and Brazil). He is also interested in the study of authoritarian regimes and their legacies in current Latin American democracies. Before enrolling in graduate school he worked in Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute. Before that, he spent a year in Yale University doing research on Mexican electoral reforms and political parties. He received a BA degree in International Relations at El Colegio de Mexico.

jahernandez@uchicago.edu

Kentaro Hirose is a Ph.D. candidate and interested in international relations, game theory, and Bayesian statistics.

His website is located at http://home.uchicago.edu/~hirose1981/Home.html.

hirose1981@uchicago.edu

clholmes@uchicago.edu

aholthoe@uchicago.edu

ohsu@uchicago.edu

ehundman@uchicago.edu

inhyee@uchicago.edu

Juan Fernando Ibarra del Cueto is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. His field of specialization is Comparative Politics, and his research interests include the study of State Building, Democratization, and the relationship between political and economic development. The regional focus of his research is Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Mexico. Before coming to Chicago he worked for the Federal Government in Mexico, first at the Office of Strategic Planning and Regional Development, and then at Oportunidades, the Human Development program of the Mexican Government. He also collaborated briefly with Alternativas y Capacidades, a Mexican NGO that works to strengthen civil society organizations. He completed his undergraduate studies at El Colegio de México, where he received a BA degree in Public Administration.

jfibarra@uchicago.edu

tislasweinstein@uchicago.edu

laolao@uchicago.edu

sej@uchicago.edu

minseungk@uchicago.edu

kang@uchicago.edu

Morgan Kaplan is a second year Ph.D. student in Political Science, studying International Relations and Comparative Politics. Born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, California, he eventually ventured out into the cold, receiving his B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University in 2010. Here at Chicago, his research interests are in security studies, civil war and insurgency, terrorism, IR theory, and Middle East politics.

mlkaplan@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Comparative Politics. Political order and disorder. State-building, political democratization, political and economic liberalization in developing countries. Ethnic conflict and cooperation. Political integration of ethnic and religious minorities, issues of identity, mobilization, and formal and informal state-society linkages.

sev@uchicago.edu

rkelanic@uchicago.edu

stephkelley@uchicago.edu

kouslaa@uchicago.edu

zpkhamba@uchicago.edu

younki@uchicago.edu

yhkim11@uchicago.edu

djkim@uchicago.edu

ekim@uchicago.edu

inaekim@uchicago.edu

kimura@uchicago.edu

Steven Klein began his PhD in the Department of Political Science in 2010. He is a political theorist with interests in critical social theory, democratic theory, and post-Kantian continental philosophy. His minor field is comparative politics. He received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 2008, after which he spent time working in Canadian politics.

stevenklein@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Ancient political philosophy, government typologies, political agency, mid-20th century political theory.

lindsayk@uchicago.edu

dlee2@uchicago.edu

yeonjulee@uchicago.edu

yblee@uchicago.edu

lesurea@uchicago.edu

levineweinberg@uchicago.edu

clevinso@uchicago.edu

klindquist@uchicago.edu

Concentration: American Politics

Research Interests: New Media, Youth Political Participation, Local and National Political Institutions

alinton@uchicago.edu

ramon@uchicago.edu

Daniel Luban is a political theorist with particular interests in the history of modern political thought (especially the 17th and 18th centuries) and in modern social theory. Before coming to Chicago, he received a bachelor’s degree in history from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree, also in history, from the University of Cambridge.

dluban@uchicago.edu

mackinnon@uchicago.edu

amalik@uchicago.edu

Gabriel Mares entered the PhD program in 2009. His research interests include theories of executive prerogative, colonial and anti-colonial thought, punishment theory with an emphasis on the death penalty, ethics in war, and torture. In 2011 he was awarded the Ignacio Martin Baro essay prize for his paper, "Torture's Discourse and the Liberal State in Crisis." Additionally, he worked as a research assistant for the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism in 2009 and for Robert K. Elder's book, Last Words of the Executed (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Mares has also performed with various improv troupes at The Second City, iO Chicago, and ComedySportz Chicago.

gpmares@uchicago.edu

tannerj@uchicago.edu

cbm@uchicago.edu

cmckinney@uchicago.edu

Yasmeen Mekawy is a PhD student in Political Science. Her areas of specialization are Comparative Politics and Political Theory with a regional focus on the Middle East. Her research interests include authoritarian regimes, new media, and resistance. She wrote her MA thesis on "Democratic Deliberation and Political Performance in the Egyptian Blogosphere," and spent the year of 2010-2011 in Cairo on an Arabic language fellowship (CASA). She plans to write her dissertation on the Egyptian Revolution and is particularly interested in the creation and deployment of oppositional discursive frames and their relationship to mass mobilization. She received an individualized BA degree from New York University.

ymekawy@uchicago.edu

cmercado@uchicago.edu

jmerseth@uchicago.edu

ajmbateau@uchicago.edu

newstone@uchicago.edu

Daniel Nichanian joined the PhD program at the University of Chicago in 2010 with a focus on political theory. Research interests include contemporary democratic theory, critical theory, practices of governance, and critiques of depoliticization. His second field is comparative politics, with a particular interest in democracy in the European Union. He received a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Yale University in 2008 and a M.A. in political philosophy from Université Paris VII-Diderot in 2010. Before joining the University of Chicago, he also worked as a journalist writing about American politics. 

dnichanian@uchicago.edu

boriana@uchicago.edu

molynciw@uchicago.edu

orourke@uchicago.edu

irami@uchicago.edu

Chelsea Paige, a comparativist with a secondary concentration in methods, is originally from New York City. She majored in International Politics and minored in Russian at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Here at the University of Chicago, her research interests include post-Soviet Russian politics, particularly political behavior and ideology among elites, as well as elite responsiveness to the mass public. When not engaged in research, Chelsea enjoys playing and listening to music, skiing, collecting vintage records, and riding her bike around Chicago.

alexandrapanait@uchicago.edu

nara@uchicago.edu

yuna09@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Organizational studies, network analysis, political violence, state development and failure, the politics of international aid, qualitative methodology, Middle Eastern politics.

sparkinson@uchicago.edu

npegahi@uchicago.edu

natashapiano@uchicago.edu

ploof@uchicago.edu

Website:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~chponce/

chponce@uchicago.edu

bgpopescu@uchicago.edu

rpopoff@uchicago.edu

Ethan Porter graduated from Bard College in 2007, receiving his B.A. in Literature and Political Studies. He then became an editor at Democracy, a left-of-center quarterly, and has written for The Nation, The Washington Post, Dissent and The Wilson Quarterly, among other publications. At Chicago since 2010, his interests include American political thought, the politics of law, and the life and work of Hannah Arendt.

evporter@uchicago.edu

pradun@uchicago.edu

shpratt@uchicago.edu

oqureshi@uchicago.edu

drashed@uchicago.edu

smonroe@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
American politics and political methodology; campaigns and elections, representation, separation of powers, Bayesian statistics.

Website:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~jrogowski

jrogowski@uchicago.edu

mrosol@uchicago.edu

kruby@uchicago.edu

csandoval@uchicago.edu

aasauced@uchicago.edu

scarry@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:

Sources of international order; security relations and agreements; the intellectual history of international relations and strategic thought.

schmidts@uchicago.edu

jss@uchicago.edu

djsemler@uchicago.edu

Jeremy Siegman hails from Highland Park, New Jersey and has a BA in Government from Cornell University. He studies political theory, focusing on sovereignty and citizenship, postcolonial theory, political economy, and the politics of knowledge and representation; as well as comparative politics, focusing on the ethnographic study of the contemporary Middle East.

Erica Simmons is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics and is currently finishing her dissertation, Markets, Movements, and Meanings: Subsistence Threats and Social Protest in Latin America. The dissertation is motivated by an interest in the intersection of market reforms and contentious politics in Latin America. The two cases at the core of the dissertation—resistance to the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and protests in the face of rising tortilla prices in Mexico—offer a lens through which to analyze and understand the conditions under which perceived, market-driven threats to material livelihood are likely to prompt resistance. The cases help to explore how the meanings with which grievances are imbued shape the origins and composition of sustained social mobilization.

Erica holds a BA in Social Studies from Harvard College and a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Her co-authored article, "Informative Regress: Critical Antecedents in Comparative Politics" was published in Comparative Political Studies in July 2010. Before arriving at the University of Chicago, Erica worked in community development in central Mexico and as a management consultant in Boston, MA. She first became interested in Latin America during a summer in Oaxaca, Mexico when she was seventeen. The region has been the focus of her professional interests ever since.

While she is sorry to see her time at the University of Chicago come to an end, Erica looks forward to joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison as an assistant professor of political science and international studies in the fall of 2012.

ericas@uchicago.edu

nrsmith@uchicago.edu

Eric Sosnoff studies American Politics in general and political psychology and ideology in particular. For more details, see his website www.ericsosnoff.com.

esosnoff@uchicago.edu

mstaisch@uchicago.edu

John Stevenson is broadly interested in the security studies intersection of sociology, comparative politics, historical methodologies, and international relations. This currently involves: Mass Killing/Genocide, Counter-insurgency, Refugees, Revolutions, State Building, Immigration, and Civil War.

hegemon@uchicago.edu

ins@uchicago.edu

suh@uchicago.edu

suttonj@uchicago.edu

brandonsward@uchicago.edu

etennant@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Comparative Politics, American Politics (primarily Race and Ethnicity), Latin America, Social Movements, Development Studies.

jthomas3@uchicago.edu

valentine@uchicago.edu

vaughnsm@uchicago.edu

mviedma@uchicago.edu

travisjames@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
International relations, comparative politics, religion and politics, security, political violence.

weir@uchicago.edu">weir@uchicago.edu

kevinw89@uchicago.edu

tomwood@uchicago.edu

Research Interests:
Political theory, German idealism, contemporary Continental philosophy with special emphasis on contemporary French phenomenology.

Website:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~xsuihan/

xsuihan@uchicago.edu

jyang@uchicago.edu

dyanowski@uchicago.edu

myazawa@uchicago.edu

jyi1@uchicago.edu

jyim@uchicago.edu

shaynaz@uchicago.edu