Fotini Christia
Fotini Christia joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 2008. She received her PhD in Public Policy at Harvard University. Fotini has done extensive ethnographic, survey and experimental fieldwork on ethnicity, conflict, and development in divided societies with a focus on Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina. She is presently conducting research on collective action and violence in Yemen and on sectarianism in Iraq. Fotini is the author of Alliance Formation in Civil War, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012, which received the Luebbert Award for Best Book in Comparative Politics, the Lepgold Prize for Best Book in International Relations and the Distinguished Book Award of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies Association. Her articles have been published in Science, in the American Political Science Review, and in Comparative Politics among other journals and her opinion pieces in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
For her research, Fotini has received support from the International Growth Center, USAID, CIDA, the UN's World Food program and the World Bank among others. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint BA in Economics-Operations Research from Columbia College and a Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Courses
- 17.504 Ethnic Politics I
- 17.582 Civil War
- 17.583 Conflict and the Graphic Novel (syllabus)
- 17.586 Warlords, Terrorists and Militias
Selected Publications
- "Empowering Women through Development Aid: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan," American Political Science Review, August 2013: Vol, 107, No.3, pp.540-557 (with Andrew Beath and Ruben Enikolopov).
- "Alliance Formation in Civil Wars," Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- "Context Modularity of Human Altruism", Science, 9 December 2011: Vol. 334, No. 6061, pp. 1392-1394 (with Marc Alexander).
- "Defining Success in Afghanistan: What Can the United States Accept?"(with Stephen Biddle and J. Alexander Thier) Foreign Affairs, July/August 2010, pp. 48-60.
- "Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan," (with Michael Semple) Foreign Affairs, (Vol. 4, No. 88) July/August 2009.
- "Following the Money: Muslim versus Muslim in Bosnia's Civil War," Comparative Politics Vol.40, No.4, July 2008, pp.461-480