Fotini Christia

Fotini Christia is Assistant Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnic conflict and civil wars. She recently completed a dissertation on civil war alliance formation, which involved extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan and Bosnia. She has published work on the role of local elites in civil wars in Comparative Politics, and is presently working on two field projects of an experimental design that address the effects of institutions of cooperation in post-conflict, multi-ethnic societies. Fotini has also worked in the Middle East and Central Asia and has written opinion pieces on her experiences from Afghanistan, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza, and Uzbekistan for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

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 and working papers

• "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
• "A Randomized Impact Evaluation of Community Development Councils in Afghanistan" (with Andrew Beath and Ruben Enikolopov).
• "An Experimental Study of Institutions and Ethnic Cooperation in the Aftermath of Civil War" (with Marc Alexander).