Faculty

Regina Bateson

Regina Bateson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT. She joined the Department in July 2013, after completing her PhD at Yale University. She studies comparative politics, with interests in crime, violence, civil wars, policing, and informal institutions. Her current book project explores the ways that ordinary people understand and provide for their own security. The book draws on extensive field research in Guatemala, where Regina argues that local experiences during the civil war explain variation in postwar systems of vigilantism and social control. In a separate research agenda, she is also investigating how violence and trauma affect political behavior.

Fotini Christia

Fotini Christia is an Associate Professor of Political Science. She received her PhD in Public Policy at Harvard University in 2008 and has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among others. Her research interests deal with issues of conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world, and she has worked out of Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, the Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia and most recently Syria and Yemen. Her book, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars, published by Cambridge University Press, was awarded 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 research has also appeared in Science and in the American Political Science Review, among other journals. Fotini has written opinion pieces 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 and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

F. Daniel Hidalgo

F. Daniel Hidalgo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley and received a BA at Princeton University. Hidalgo is a past recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright program, and the Experiments in Governance and Politics Network. His research focuses on the political economy of elections, campaigns, and representation in developing democracies, especially in Latin America, as well as quantitative methods in the social sciences. His work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Politics, Review of Economic and Statistics and the American Journal of Political Science. His working paper “Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate Through Clientelism” (with Simeon Nichter) received the Kellogg-Notre Dame Award for best paper in comparative politics.

Evan Lieberman

Evan Lieberman is the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa. He conducts research in the field of comparative politics, with a focus on development and ethnic conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Lieberman received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the author of Boundaries of Contagion: How Ethnic Politics have Shaped Government Responses to AIDS (Princeton University Press 2009) and Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa (Cambridge University Press 2003), and has published articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Development. Lieberman is recipient of the 2014 David Collier Mid-Career Award, the 2010 Giovanni Sartori Book prize, the 2004 Mattei Dogan book prize, the 2002 Gabriel A. Almond dissertation award; and the 2002 Mary Parker Follett article award. He was a Fulbright fellow in South Africa in 1997-98, and a Robert Wood Johnson health policy scholar at Yale University in 2000-02. Previously, he was Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Politics at Princeton University (2002-14).

Richard Nielsen

Richard Nielsen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT. He completed his PhD (Government) and AM (Statistics) at Harvard University, and holds a BA from Brigham Young University. His current work uses statistical text analysis and fieldwork in Cairo mosques to understand the radicalization of jihadi clerics in the Arab world. Nielsen also writes on international law, the political economy of human rights, political violence, and political methodology. Some of this work is published or forthcoming in The American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Political Analysis, and Sociological Methods and Research. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Roger Petersen

Roger Petersen holds BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. He has taught at MIT since 2001 and was recently named the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science. Petersen studies comparative politics with a special focus on conflict and violence, mainly in Eastern Europe, but also in Colombia. He has written three books: Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011). He also has an interest in comparative methods and has co-edited, with John Bowen, Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He teaches classes on civil war, ethnic politics, and civil-military relations.

Ben Ross Schneider

Ben Ross Schneider is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Brazil program. Prior to joining the department in 2008, Schneider taught at Princeton University and Northwestern University. Professor Schneider's teaching and research interests fall within the general fields of comparative politics, political economy, and Latin American politics. His books include Reinventing Leviathan: The Politics of Administrative Reform in Developing Countries (2003), Business Politics and the State in 20th Century Latin America (2004), Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America: Business, Labor, and the Challenges of Equitable Development (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Designing Industrial Policy in Latin America: Business-Government Relations and the New Developmentalism (2015), and New Order and Progress: Democracy and Development in Brazil (Oxford University Press, 2016). He also has published on topics such as democratization, technocracy, education politics, the developmental state, business groups, industrial policy, and comparative bureaucracy.

Lily Tsai

Lily L. Tsai is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. Her research focuses on issues of accountability, governance, and political participation in developing contexts, with particular emphasis on Asia and East Africa. Her book, Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China, was published in Cambridge University's Studies on Comparative Politics and received the 2007-08 Dogan Award from the Society of Comparative Research for the best book published in the field of comparative research. Tsai has also published articles in The American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, The China Quarterly, and World Development. Tsai received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 2005, and is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright program and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.