MIT Political Science

Biography  |  Research  |  Publications  |  Subjects

Fotini Christia joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 2008. She received her PhD in Public Policy at Harvard University, and has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs among others. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnicity, conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world. Fotini has written opinion pieces on her experiences from Afghanistan, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza and Uzbekistan for Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. 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.

Biography  |  Research  |  Publications  |  Subjects

Research

Fotini has published work on the role of local elites in civil wars and her book manuscript entitled The Closest of Enemies: Alliance Formation in Civil War is under contract at Cambridge University Press. She has done extensive ethnographic, survey and experimental research in the field and is presently working on two projects of an experimental design, one in Afghanistan and one in Bosnia, that address the effects of institutions of cooperation in post-conflict, multi-ethnic societies. Her current Afghanistan research project, on which she is co-principal investigator, is a randomized impact evaluation of a 1 billion dollar community driven development program. The evaluation, which examines questions of local governance and development, spans 500 rural communities, across 10 districts in 6 Afghan provinces and involves approximately 15,000 survey respondents. For her research, Fotini has received support from the International Growth Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, USAID, the UN’s World Food program and the World Bank among others.

Biography  |  Research  |  Publications  |  Subjects

Recent Publications

"Context Modularity of Human Altruism", (with Marc Alexander), Science, 9 December 2011:Vol. 334 no. 6061 pp. 1392-1394.

"Defining Success in Afghanistan: What Can the US Accept?" (with Stephen Biddle and J. Alexander Thier), Foreign Affairs, July/August 2010.

"Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan," (with Michael Semple), Foreign Affairs, 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.

Biography  |  Research  |  Publications  |  Subjects

Subjects

17.504 Ethnic Politics I
17.582 Civil War
17.586 Warlords Terrorists and Militias
17.869 Scope and Methods