Graduate Student Research Projects

Alonzo’s work aims to explain the peculiar trajectory from a professional association to a labor union by teachers, juxtaposed against the stability of the professional model by doctors in the US. Alonzo uses a comparative-historical approach, contrasting U.S. teachers and doctors’ organizations with their counterparts in England and Wales.

Emma’s research investigates the early history of Alaskan electrification, examining why

the state’s power grid pivoted to public ownership so quickly, wholly, and lastingly from the 1880s, despite intense energy conflict and land contestation in the late twentieth century. She considers this phenomenon in stark contrast to both the Lower 48’s integrated grid system, approximately 75% privately owned, and to Alaska’s majority privately-owned energy extraction industries.

Gray’s work explores Hanoi’s boom in extralegal self-built housing in the 1980s and 1990s and its relationship to Vietnam’s market transition, which began in 1986. Self-building contradicted the socialist model of housing production and laid the groundwork for marketable land use rights, which the state introduced in 1993. Through archival research and fieldwork, Gray makes an important intervention in the study of (post)socialism and Vietnamese state-society relations.

Alex’s project investigates why and how Hong Kong’s diaspora communities have fractured into competing political camps—particularly during and after Donald Trump’s first presidency— and whether these divisions reinforce or challenge colonial legacies and anthropocentric assumptions about democracy, capitalism, and ecology. Alex uses a combination of archival research, interviews, oral histories, and digital ethnography.

Molly’s research investigates the nexus of criminal law and the political economy of public space, using the case study of the criminalization of street vending in San Francisco’s Mission Corridor. Molly is constructing a framework to better understand how, why, and under what circumstances the state uses criminal law to intervene on the use of public space, and how people and communities push back against the power of state and capital.

By focusing on the negotiations at the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, Kate’s study brings scientific evidence and policymaking into the same frame, revealing how different actors interpret and utilize evidence in the negotiation process. Kate’s work illuminates the political, epistemological, and methodological challenges in operationalizing loss and damage, particularly in the context of the newly established Loss and Damage Fund and the ongoing debates over attribution and compensation.

Sarah’s work investigates how legal pathways, particularly citizen fraud reporting initiatives, can strengthen the fiscal contract in ethnically diverse, post-conflict states. Focusing on Kenya’s iWhistle platform, she examines the conditions under which citizens engage in whistleblowing, and whether such mechanisms enhance perceptions of state legitimacy, cooperation, and tax compliance.

Sheah is researching the extent to which censorship reduces political mobilization and quells negative political sentiment, and how far Internet Service Provider (ISP) ownership structure, including the level of state ownership, constrains or enables censorship. Looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, Sheah investigates subnational regional variation in ISP ownership over time, to establish the relationship between the extent of state ISP control and censorship events.

Nathaniel’s research examines the development of green capitalist frontiers through the lens of the minerals required for clean energy transitions. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, policy analysis, and quantitative analyses, Nathaniel investigates lithium and copper flows across three supply chain stages in Argentina, China, and the U.K, and sheds light on competing models of the relationship between justice (or injustice) and green capitalism.

Em’s research investigates how the interaction between China’s industrial strategy and the emerging industrial strategies of the United States, the European Union, and key host countries is driving patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) that defy traditional theories of political economy. Em focuses on electric vehicle (EV) batteries because they are at the center of an intensifying wave of industrial policy, tied not only to decarbonization goals but also to national security concerns.

Fikremariam’s project contributes to the study of the effect of ethnic favoritism on development in African nations by providing an empirical assessment of the degree to which ethnic favoritism and political connectedness influence access to credit in Ethiopia. It further examines the degree to which economic liberalization, marked by the opening of the banking sector to foreign competition, reduces or reinforces ethnic favoritism in credit access.

Ritika is conducting an online survey experiment, focused on Indian users, to test how people’s attitudes on policies targeted towards minorities change with a change in beliefs about opportunity in society. Ritika’s work explores the hypothesis that in times of low economic opportunity, upwardly mobile, low-income individuals can be more responsive to identity politics based on resentment or fairness beliefs, rather than punishing the political incumbent for poor economic performance and demanding redistribution.