princeton phd in politics

Job Placement

While students complete their dissertations, the department works actively to help them find appropriate employment. The following Ph.D. students and recent graduates are seeking employment this academic year.

There are no current job market candidates at this time.

Job Placement History

The department's record in placing graduate students is very strong.  Following is a list of first and second placements of recent graduates.

Graduate School

Social Policy

General information, program offerings:.

• Joint Degree

Department for program:

Affiliated departments:, director of graduate studies:, graduate program administrator:.

The Joint Degree Program (JDP) in Social Policy is a collaborative effort of the School of Public and International Affairs and the Departments of Politics, Psychology, Population Studies, and Sociology.  The Department of Economics also affiliates with the program, but not as a joint degree participant.

The JDP follows a "discipline-plus" structure. The "discipline" means that all students complete a Ph.D. in a basic social science; the "plus" means that they will deeply engage with multidisciplinary perspectives on the problems of economic insecurity and inequality in advanced post-industrial societies and the developing world.

The program is designed to appeal to students who want to pursue academic careers in a traditional discipline but who see themselves as committed to the study of social issues of public importance. The program in social policy addresses some of the most pressing problems we face in the U.S. and other parts of the world where inequality generates conflict, poverty and prejudice; diminishes political participation; and reduces opportunities for social mobility. We seek to bring the most rigorous tools of social science to bear on these important social questions.

JDP students earn doctoral degrees in politics and social policy, psychology and social policy, demography (population studies) and social policy, and sociology and social policy. These titles reflect a fundamental characteristic of the program: students are simultaneously full members of their disciplinary departments and participants in an inter-disciplinary community.

For graduate students in economics, we also offer a special non-degree fellowship to be completed in the third or fourth year of graduate school.

Students in the Joint Degree Program must first be admitted to the University by their home (disciplinary) department, and then by the multidisciplinary social policy faculty. Only those who are admitted by both committees will be eligible to participate in the program, insuring complete integration of the students into their disciplinary departments as well as the social policy community. The application process, outlined below, differs based on the students’ home departments.

Students interested in the joint degree with sociology or population studies have the option of applying to the program at the time of their initial application to the Graduate School.  Otherwise, students may apply to the program after their first or second year of graduate study. Students applying after their first or second year of graduate study must complete the internal application for admission by March 3 and submit to Regina Foglia, program administrator for the joint degree program.

Program Offerings

Program offering: joint degree.

Complete 1.5 years of course work, including the year-long course “Issues in Inequality and Social Policy,” followed by the one-semester “Advanced Empirical Workshop.”

General exam

Complete a general exam in social inequality or social policy. (This requirement applies to Sociology and Population Studies students only; students may count one of their home department exams toward this requirement.) 

Additional requirements

Participate in the Monday lecture series, “Dilemmas of Inequality,” held each fall.

Complete an empirical paper for the “Advanced Empirical Workshop.” (Students may count one of their home department papers toward this requirement.) 

Associated Faculty

• Jennifer L. Jennings, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
• Emily Pronin, Psychology (spring)
• Andreas B. Wiedemann, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs (fall)

For a full list of faculty members and fellows please visit the department or program website.

Graduate Conference in Political Theory

2024 conference, 16th annual graduate conference in political theory, april 19-20, 2024 wooten hall 301, princeton university.

The 16th Princeton University Graduate Conference in Political Theory will be held from  Friday, April 19 to Saturday, April 20, 2024.

The conference offers graduate students a unique opportunity to present and receive feedback on works in progress. Each session focuses exclusively on one paper. After receiving feedback from a Princeton graduate student discussant, each author will engage in an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty, students, and guests.

The conference also features a keynote address from a distinguished scholar. Previous keynote speakers include Alexander Gourevitch, Katrina Forrester, Alan Ryan, David Estlund, Sharon Krause, Patchen Markell, Elisabeth Ellis, Jill Frank, Bryan Garsten, Hélène Landemore, Alison McQueen, Corey Robin, and Daniela Cammack.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Madhav Khosla (Columbia Law) will deliver the 2024 keynote address. 

Conference attendance is free and open to the extended Princeton community and affiliates of neighboring institutions. To register please fill out this form . A link to conference papers will be sent to all registrants.

The conference is generously supported by the University Center for Human Values and the Department of Politics.

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The Politics program from Princeton University leads to the doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in politics.

Princeton University Multiple locations Princeton , New Jersey , United States Top 0.1% worldwide Studyportals University Meta Ranking 4.3 Read 19 reviews

Program Offerings

The Politics program from Princeton University is designed to offer broad professional training in political science and to enable students to specialize in any of the main subfields of political science (American politics, comparative politics, international politics, and political theory), as well as public law and formal and quantitative analysis.

Students participating in the Program in Political Philosophy may compose a special field made up of courses in one of the other cooperating departments in the program (classics, history, philosophy, and religion). Other departments that have been of interest to students include economics, sociology, psychology, East Asian studies, and Near Eastern studies.

In addition to regularly offered seminars, graduate students may create reading courses under the direction of a faculty member to explore more specialized topics. Reading courses typically include one faculty member and one student, although some include several students.

Programme Structure

Courses include:

• Economics and Politics
• Interest Groups and Social Movements in American Politics and Policy
• Plato's Political Philosophy 
• Mathematics for Political Science
• Survey Analysis

Key information

• 60 months

Start dates & application deadlines

• Apply before 2024-12-15 00:00:00

Disciplines

Academic requirements.

We are not aware of any specific GRE, GMAT or GPA grading score requirements for this programme.

English requirements

We are not aware of any English requirements for this programme.

Student insurance

Make sure to cover your health, travel, and stay while studying abroad. Even global coverages can miss important items, so make sure your student insurance ticks all the following:

• Additional medical costs (i.e. dental)
• Repatriation, if something happens to you or your family
• Home contents and baggage

We partnered with Aon to provide you with the best affordable student insurance, for a carefree experience away from home.

Starting from €0.53/day, free cancellation any time.

Remember, countries and universities may have specific insurance requirements. To learn more about how student insurance work at Princeton University and/or in United States, please visit Student Insurance Portal .

Other requirements

General requirements.

• Statement of Academic Purpose
• Resume / Curriculum Vitae
• Letters of Recommendation
• Transcripts
• Required Tests
• Writing Sample

Tuition Fee

Princeton guarantees full funding for its Ph.D. candidates for all years of regular program enrolment.

Living costs for Princeton

The living costs include the total expenses per month, covering accommodation, public transportation, utilities (electricity, internet), books and groceries.

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Scholarships Information

Below you will find PhD's scholarship opportunities for Politics.

Available Scholarships

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Many departments on the Princeton campus in the social sciences and the humanities provide opportunities for PhD students to concentrate in law-related fields. The Politics Department has demonstrated a century of commitment to studies in public law ; the History Department has trained a number of legal historians ; the Sociology Department has a growing group of scholars doing sociology of law ; and the Anthropology Department is home to a large number of legal anthropologists . Many other departments also have opportunities to focus on law in the course of PhD education. For more information, consult the department in question. We have included here some of the most visible concentrations within PhD programs on campus.

Public Law in the Politics Department: A Century of Commitment

The study of law has been a feature of Princeton''s politics department for more than a century. "Public law" is one of the graduate specialty fields, and undergraduate courses in constitutional law and legal theory are among the most popular subjects in the department. The Politics Department at Princeton participated in LAPA''s birth by being one of the three initial hosting departments. (The other two were the Center for Human Values and the Woodrow Wilson School .)

Princeton''s politics department has a distinguished history in the field of public law. Starting with Woodrow Wilson, and continuing down through the holders of the McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence — W. F. Willoughby, Edward S. Corwin, Alpheus Mason, Walter Murphy and Robert George — the Princeton politics department has traditionally been an important home for the study of constitutional law. Because the department houses the McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence, American constitutional law has been able to maintain a constant presence in the department over the last century.

In addition to Professor George, the current occupant of the McCormick Chair, the Princeton politics department has on its faculty Keith Whittington and Ken Kersch, who both add to Princeton''s strength in American constitutionalism. The department has resources across the entire field of public law, creating one of the most diverse groups of scholars in politics and law in the country. Jennifer Widner and Kim Lane Scheppele work on comparative constitutionalism, with Widner focusing on African constitutionalism and Scheppele focusing on post-communist Europe. Anne-Marie Slaughter , Robert Keohane and John Ikenberry work on international law; Gary Bass and Emilie Hafner-Burton work on international human rights and humanitarian law. Andrew Moravcsik writes about European Union constitutionalism. Chuck Cameron and Keith Whittington work on judicial politics. In American Politics, Chuck Cameron, Jessica Trounstine, Tom Romer, David Lewis, Beth Jamieson and Brandice Canes-Wrone have ongoing projects in which law is central. And Stephen Macedo, Charles Beitz, Alan Patten, Philip Pettit, Jennifer Pitts and Jan-Werner Müller approach legal issues from the political theory side. Many others in the department have law-related encounters in their work and teaching.

PhD students with an interest in public law may take a generals exam in the field and write a law-related dissertation. For students presently specializing in public law in the department, see http://www.princeton.edu/politics/people/byfield/publiclaw/ .

The PhD in History: A Tradition of Legal Historians

The Princeton History Department is an attractive place for graduate study for legal historians who wish to situate their studies within the widest understanding of the historical enterprise. Among the faculty, many who work in social history, cultural history, economic history, diplomatic history, political history, intellectual history, the history of science, and the history of the book (to list only a few of the subspecialties and methodologies found among the faculty) also seriously engage with the law. Hendrik Hartog holds the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professorship in the History of American Law and Liberty.

A steady stream of students has entered the department with an interest in legal history. They have gone on to take minor field examinations in legal history and to write dissertations in the area. Some of the students who have focused their doctoral work on legal history include:

• Elizabeth Clark, Professor of Law, Boston University (deceased) (religion and feminism in nineteenth century America)
• Daniel Ernst, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law School (labor and the regulatory state)
• Sarah Barringer Gordon, Professor of Law and History, University of Pennsylvania (church and state; Mormon polygamy)
• Michael Millender, Private Practice, Portland, OR (criminal practice in the early republic)
• Felicia Kornbluh, Assistant Professor of History, Duke University (welfare rights movement; rights and regulation in modern America)
• Jacob Katz Cogan, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati (state constitution making)
• Todd Stevens, Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers-Newark (Chinese immigrants and economic life in the nineteenth century Pacific Coast; law and the economy)
• Risa Goluboff, Professor of Law, University of Virginia (civil rights law and practice during World War II)
• Donna Dennis, Ph.D., Acting Professor of Law, Rutgers-Newark (pornography and obscenity law in nineteenth century New York City)
• Kenneth Mack, Professor of Law, Harvard University (African American lawyers and the invention of civil rights practice)
• Mitra Sharafi, Assistant Professor of Law and History, University of Wisconsin-Madison (South Asian legal history)

A Growing Group in the Sociology of Law

Princeton''s sociology department has a growing group of both faculty and students interested in the sociology of law. Faculty members Devah Pager and Bruce Western study the labor market consequences of mass incarceration; Mitchell Duneier, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, and Katherine Newman work at the intersection of ethnography, poverty, and legality; Paul Starr , Miguel Centeno and Kim Lane Scheppele engage political and legal theory while thinking about historical transformations; Viviana Zelizer uses legal materials as data for her work on change and variation in interpersonal economic relations; Paul DiMaggio and Doug Massey examine the ways that inequality becomes embedded in social practices that the law is then called upon to change. Other members of the sociology department faculty engage law in their work in a variety of ways.

The department''s course offerings in this area are growing and PhD students have started to take sociology of law as a general examination field and to write dissertations in the area. One of the department''s PhD students in sociology of law, Deborah Becher, just received a Dissertation Support Grant from the Law and Social Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation and another, Scott Washington, received the best graduate student paper prize from the Law and Society Association in 2006. Sara Nephew Hassani became the first PhD student in recent years to complete a generals examination in the sociology of law.

Anthropology of Law: A Major Concentration of Specialists

Princeton''s anthropology department houses perhaps the densest concentration of legal anthropologists in the country. Though the department is small, it can count among its faculty five anthropologists concerned with law. Lawrence Rosen is both a lawyer and an anthropologist (and an adjunct member of Columbia''s law faculty). He works on the law of the Middle East and North Africa, with an additional specialty in Native American Law. Carol Greenhouse is a former president of the Law and Society Association, with a specialty in law and community in the United States. John Borneman, founding co-editor of the Princeton Report on Knowledge , works on political and legal anthropology, focusing on countries going through political and cultural transformations. He began by working on Germany before, during and after unification and is now working on Syria and Lebanon. Abdellah Hammoudi, the founding director of the Princeton Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, works on issues at the intersection of political authoritarianism and religion in the Middle East, more specifically on Morocco. João Biehl works on medical and political anthropology in Latin America and is studying intellectual property rights and the regulation of pharmaceutical markets in Brazil.

Graduate students in the department of anthropology may focus their research on topics in the anthropology of law.

Department of Religion

Religion, Ethics, and Politics

Associated Faculty:

Leora Batnitzky

Andrew Chignell

Gabriel Citron

Eric Gregory

This field of concentration attends to relations among religious, ethical, and political aspects of culture and to the moral significance of religious traditions. Students are expected to develop specific areas of historical knowledge while also becoming familiar with recent work in theology, philosophy, comparative ethics, politics, and social theory.

The General Examination in Religion, Ethics, and Politics is roughly parallel in structure to the examination in Religion and Philosophy, including a unit on a classic text, a review essay, a study of a particular conceptual problem or normative issue, and a unit administered outside the Department, normally either in Politics or Philosophy. Dissertations in Religion, Ethics, and Politics include interpretative studies of figures and movements, analytical studies of ideas and arguments, and critical studies of culture and society.

Before completing the General Examination, a student in this field is required to demonstrate reading knowledge of two modern foreign languages relevant to his or her doctoral research. In most cases, this means, at a minimum, passing approved six-week intensive courses in two of the following languages: French, German, and Spanish. Students are also expected to learn whatever languages are essential for completing the dissertation project in a respectable way. For example, a student proposing a dissertation on Augustine would normally be expected to learn Latin (as the language of the primary sources) in addition to French and German (as the languages most heavily represented in the secondary literature).

Some students in this field formally enroll in the  Program in Political Philosophy , jointly sponsored by the departments of  Classics ,  History ,  Philosophy ,  Politics , and Religion. For such students the “outside” unit of the Examination is administered by the Program, and covers the history of Western political theory.

All students in Religion, Ethics, and Politics do some of their work outside the Department, with such professors as, Robert George, Philip Pettit, and Melissa Lane in  Politics , John Cooper and Alexander Nehamas in  Philosophy , and John Bowlin at  Princeton Theological Seminary .

Academic Fields

Asian Religions

Philosophy and Religion

Religion in the Americas

Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity

Graduate Program

Current Students

Prospective Students

Related links

• Program in Political Philosophy
• Department of Classics
• Department of History
• Department of Philosopy
• Department of Politics
• Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton University Doctoral Dissertations, 2011-2024

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Summer Reads 2024: Princeton professors share what's on their lists

Illustration by Matilda Luk, Office of Communications

Six Princeton professors talk about beloved books on their shelves and share what’s on their summer reading lists — from scholarly nonfiction to crime fiction, with history, poetry, rom-com, artificial intelligence, magic, democracy, philosophy and more in the mix.

Some book choices reflect our contributors’ research and teaching. Others illuminate personal interests and current issues in the headlines. 

Campt is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities, and professor of art & archaeology and visual arts at the Lewis Center for the Arts . 

Tell us about a particular book on your shelf.  

" The Sweet Flypaper of Life , " photographs by Roy DeCarava, text by Langston Hughes.

This exquisite little book (which when opened, nestles perfectly in the palm of your hands) is a volume I teach regularly, but it’s also an endless source of inspiration and a beacon of hope. DeCarava’s intimate black-and-white photos of Harlem street and domestic life allow us to “feel" Black sociality through a complex play of darkness, shadow and light which resonates with deep affective power. 

His work is a prime example of a concept that lies at the heart of my research: "visual frequency" — a term that describes imagery that registers beyond what we see by soliciting powerful emotional responses. It captures ineffable qualities of Black sociality and its irrepressible strivings even in the face of the most challenging circumstances.

What’s on your summer reading list? 

As I prepare to go on sabbatical, I have the privilege of allowing my personal and professional booklists to merge as I now begin to embrace the delight of extended unstructured reading time — beginning with two books of poetry:

" To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness "   by Robin Coste Lew takes us on a lyrical journey through the author’s family photographs and the confluence of insights, responses and emotions that emerge through our encounter with the memories and relations that photographs conjure.

" Bluest Nude " by Ama Codjoe is a collection of verses which enact through poetry what I aspire to do in prose. Like me, she " writes to "  the artwork of Black artists including  Betye Saar, Malick Sidibé, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and my Princeton colleague in visual arts Deana Lawson,  among others.

Rounding out the top three titles on my work/pleasure reading list is " Devotion ," the first catalog/collection of essays on and conversations with the genre-defying filmmaker Garrett Bradley. With essays and interviews by an exceptional range of artists, critics, curators and scholars including Huey Copeland, Tyler Mitchell, Joy James, Doreen St. Felix, Legacy Russell, Kevin Quashie, Arthur Jafa and Linda Goode Bryant, quite frankly, I cannot wait!

Tom Griffiths

Tom Griffiths 

Griffiths is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness, and Culture of Psychology and Computer Science .

Tell us about a particular book on your shelf. 

I am going to break the rules a little bit to include two books that I highly recommend for readers interested in learning more about artificial intelligence:

" The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values " by Brian Christian. One of the biggest questions raised by AI is how to create AI systems that are aligned with human values. This book takes on that question and provides a great introduction to some of the ideas behind modern AI. Brian was my co-author on "Algorithms to Live By" (2016), and I loved this new book of his.

" The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI " by Fei-Fei Li, a 1999 alumna and former faculty member at Princeton, where she did some of the fundamental research that launched the AI revolution. This book elegantly interweaves her story with insights about how AI works and is this year's Pre-Read for the incoming Class of 2028.

Most of the non-fiction reading I do is about finding connections between topics in AI and cognitive science and ideas in other fields. Two books I’m excited to read are:

• " Games: Agency as Art " by C. Thi Nguyen. Games are objects that reveal a lot about human cognition — designing a game partly involves reverse-engineering how people think about the world and what they find rewarding. This book takes a unique perspective on games and game design that I am hoping will inform some new projects in my lab.
• " Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa " by my Princeton colleague Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. This book is about how early practitioners of magic interpreted aspects of what we would later recognize as cognitive science through a supernatural lens. What we believe about magic provides a very pure measure of how human minds interpret their environment. I have a few papers that look at this idea in detail.

I also read a lot of fiction — about a book a week. Here are three novels I’m looking forward to reading this summer:

• " The Familiar " by Leigh Bardugo explores the interpretation of magic and miracles in post-Inquisition Spain (a topic of particular interest as my wife has Sephardic heritage).
• " Dawn " by Octavia E. Butler is a science fiction story about a survivor rescued from an extinction event by aliens and tasked with recreating human society. Alignment problems abound.
• " Empires " by Nick Earls unfolds over three centuries and three continents. I grew up in Australia and read books by Australians when I get homesick — Earls is one of my favorite Australian authors.

Jacob Nebel

Nebel is professor of philosophy and a 2013 Princeton graduate .

My favorite philosophy book is " Reasons and Persons " by Derek Parfit. It’s just breathtaking in scope, wrestling with questions about the rationality of morality and self-interest, our attitudes to time, the nature and importance of personal identity, and our obligations to future generations. The headline, “ Tibetan monks found chanting text by Oxford philosopher, ” refers to this book.

Parfit died unexpectedly in 2017. He, his work, and his mentorship (he supervised my BPhil thesis at Oxford) meant a great deal to me. A wonderful biography — “ Parfit ” by David Edmonds — was published last year by Princeton University Press.

Some philosophy books:

• " The Bounds of Possibility: Puzzles of Modal Variation "   by Cian Dorr, a 2002 Princeton graduate alumnus, John Hawthorne and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, is about the limits of how different things could have been. For example, Nassau Hall could have been smaller than it actually is, but it couldn’t have been as small as my pinky toe. This sort of judgment gives rise to various puzzles, which are the topic of this book.
• " Bias: A Philosophical Study ." What is it for someone or something to be biased? Why do we tend to attribute bias to people who disagree with us, and to think that we ourselves are less biased than others? This book, by my Princeton colleague (and senior thesis adviser) Thomas Kelly, professor of philosophy, is about questions like these concerning the nature and normative significance of bias.
• " The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance and Effective Altruism " by Theron Pummer is about whether and in what ways our duties to aid are sensitive to the number of people we could help, their distance from or connections to us, the cumulative sacrifice we make over our lifetimes, and how we want our own lives to go.

Some non-philosophy books:

• " The MANIAC"   by Benjamín Labatut is a fictionalized biography of John von Neumann (among other things). 
• " City in Ruins "   by Don Winslow is the conclusion to a crime trilogy I’ve enjoyed so far. 
• " Glorious Exploits " by Ferdia Lennon is a comedy set in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.
• " Funny Story "   by Emily Henry, queen of the millennial meet-cute.
• " Everyone Poops " by Tarō Gomi (originally published in Japanese). I have a 2-year-old son, and this summer is potty-training season.

Christy Wampole

Wampole is professor of French and Italian .

" Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks on His Life and Work ." Recently, I’ve taken an interest in technophobia and technoskepticism and was happy to find some of my intuitions confirmed in the writings of the French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). 

Although he died before the Internet and cellphones had introduced now familiar forms of distraction, depression and anxiety, Ellul wrote presciently about the many ways technology would change every aspect of culture, including daily life, art, literature and philosophy. The humanity of his writing inspires me to bring an analog spirit to my writing and teaching.

I am in the middle of a book project on the Zeitgeist or the spirit of the times, an idea that emerged in response to the French Revolution.

Back then, several European thinkers — mostly Germans — tried to figure out why the people seemed suddenly moved by some invisible force to rise up against monarchy, and one of the more consistent explanations was that a ghostly figure, the spirit of the age, had exerted its influence on them.

This project has filled my shelves with an odd mix of books: writings on ghosts, revolution, atmospheres, Napoleon, vibes, pop culture, crowds, Romanticism, journalism, public opinion polls, generations. Still left to read over the summer are:

• " The Unnamable Present "   by Roberto Calasso ("L'innominabile attuale" in Italian), part of a series about the secular West in the 20th century.
• " The Mood of the World "   by Heinz Bude, originally published in German under the title "Das Gefühl der Welt," seeks to understand contemporary uneasiness in the realms of politics, finance, social life and technology. 
• " Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture "   by Douglas Coupland, a book about and for my generation, which, perhaps because of my default Gen-X slacker attitude, I never actually read. 
• And many more books with titles that refer in some way to the spirit of the times: " Surfing the Zeitgeist "   by Gilbert Adair, " The Spirit of the Age "   by William Hazlitt, the two-volume " L’Esprit du temps "   by Edgar Morin and "Geist der Zeit"   by Ernst Moritz Arndt, published in 1806 .

I will also do a deep dive into the Mass-Observation Archive, a social research project started in 1937 using questionnaires, diaries, and various observers who would record the minutiae of daily life. Some of the materials collected have been anthologized into volumes such as “ Speak for Yourself: A Mass-Observation Anthology 1937-1949 .”

Anna Yu Wang

Yu Wang is assistant professor of music .

" Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions " by Kofi Agawu. With chapter titles like “Polymeter, Additive Rhythm, and Othering Enduring Myths,” this book is chock full of provocations on the ethics of researching African music (in particular) and music beyond the Western canon (in general). It models daring question-asking, compelling argumentation, and candor. My thinking continues to be challenged, in the best of ways, by this book.

First, let me recommend some mind-opening reads:

• " Record of a Spaceborn Few " by Becky Chambers, part of the exquisite “Wayfarers” series, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series in science fiction or fantasy. Set in an outer space human colony, this book is a sensitive and hope-filled exploration of death, change, immigration, otherness and the makeup of social institutions.
• " Private Equity " by Carrie Sun. This memoir penned by the former assistant of a major hedge fund CEO explores mental hardship, Asian-American identity and workplace culture.
• " The Sea Around Us " by Rachel Carson. This book offers a beautiful account of the history and lifeforms of the earth’s ocean. It is written in a vivid, transporting prose that I aspire towards in my own writing.

These more scholarly books on my summer reading (and rereading) list engage the ethics and politics of difference-making and relation-seeking, and the way these opposing tendencies leave their mark on aesthetic experience.

• " Ornamentalism " by Anne Anlin Cheng, professor of English at Princeton. This book studies how the ornament, cast as the site of the oriental, feminine and marginalized, became leveraged as the foil for “modernity.”
• " Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity " by my Princeton colleague Gavin Steingo, professor of music, surveys the motivations behind human attempts at animal and alien communication in the 20th century. It addresses charged themes like desire, love and the imagination of the human/nonhuman divide.
• " Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska " by Jessica Bissett Perea. This study of Indigenous musicking in Alaska shows how musical acts and positionalities are formed from a dense network of incommensurable truths.
• " Chinatown Opera in North America " by Nancy Yunhwa Rao. This book historicizes the significance of Cantonese opera among the first Chinese immigrants in Canada and the U.S., stretching the limits of how American music is conventionally defined.

Leonard Wantchekon

Wantchekon is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and professor of politics and international affairs .

My favorite book is " Ambiguous Adventure " by Cheick Hamidou Kane, a classic of African literature. It is the captivating story of the Diallobe community facing the challenge of preserving their cultural identity in the face educational opportunities brought by the French colonial rule. The central character, Samba Diallo, becomes a brilliant college student in France, while remaining deeply rooted in his local traditions. The question is how to remain true to the “ultimate values” of the past while embracing modern education.

I am re-reading two novels related to my work:

• " Homegoing " is a historical fiction novel by Yaa Gyasi. It follows the family history of a woman from the Asante ethnic group in Ghana during the transatlantic slave trade. Her two daughters are separated by life circumstances — one marries a British governor running the slave trade and the other is an enslaved captive of the same man. The book covers the lives of their descendants over several generations. It parallels my research on the intergenerational trauma of the transatlantic slave trade and on the social mobility of students from the first colonial schools in Benin, my home country, and Nigeria.
• “ Burger’s Daughter ” is a political and historical novel by the Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. It covers the emergence of a group of white political activists working alongside the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela to end the Apartheid regime. The novel is a direct and vivid account of the struggle against Apartheid in the 1970s, which inspired my own involvement in the prodemocracy movement in Benin in the early '80s, as well as my 2012 autobiography, “ Rêver à contre-courant ."

Also on my list is " Purple Hibiscus " by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, on the lives of two siblings from an upper-class family in Eastern Nigeria during the Civil War. It is a fascinating account of a wealthy Nigerian authoritarian family, the emotional turmoil of the children and the powerful bonds that emerge from it.

And three books to read ahead of the 2024 presidential election:

• The most interesting read is “ Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action and Make Real Change ” by Eitan Hersh. The book describes the way contemporary American politics has become more of a hobby, an entertainment or a spectator sport, with strong emotional attachments to candidates and dinner table arguments triggered by sound bites from campaign ads or provocative social media posts by politicians. It calls for a shift in political culture with more constructive dialogue between informed citizens as well as effective collective action for meaningful social change. It is also a call for us to be more involved in local politics.
• A great complementary reading is “ Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation ,” a collection of essays by Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu. The book explores the challenges of bottom-up democracy, in which citizens play a prominent role in policy formulation and implementation. Participatory governance requires electoral campaigns that are deliberative, with more town hall meeting-style interactions between candidates and voters, as opposed to campaign ads and rallies. This is consistent with evidence from my research on deliberative political communication, indicating that these strategies promote ethical voting and informed citizenry.  
• For an in-depth history of town meetings in American democracy, I would suggest Frank M. Bryan’s “ Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works .” The bottom line is that, “Citizens are not born, they are raised.” In 19th-century New England, town halls were widely perceived as training grounds for citizenship.

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The Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance

Niehaus Fellows Present at “Supporting Women in International Political Economy” Conference

The SWIPE Conference was a selective, one-day workshop at the University of Pennsylvania organized by Dr. Cleo O’Brien-Udry and supported by Dr. Edward Mansfield. The workshop was supported by the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania .

The April 12 th conference aimed to showcase innovative work on topics related to international political economy, including issues such as trade, investment, debt, and lending. In addition to presenting and getting feedback on cutting-edge scholarship, participants in the workshop had many opportunities to create networks that incorporated both junior and senior scholars, and to address challenges that are particularly acute for women in the field of international political economy. The connections forged at the conference are expected to foster supportive networks that will move the profession forward for years to come.

L-R:  Thomas Flaherty, Sabrina Arias, Zoe Xincheng Ge, Soohyun Cho, Gino Pauselli

Many Niehaus scholars presented work and participated as discussants and panelists. Among these many scholars with current and past connections with the Niehaus center, current and former Niehaus affiliates Layna Mosley, Christina Schneider, and Simone Dietrich served as discussants and provided advice to junior scholars as part of a roundtable discussion. Current fellows Gino Pauselli and Thomas Flaherty also were discussants. Former Niehaus Fellows Haillie Na-Kyung Lee and Lindsey Dolan presented new work on investor-state arbitration and the role of individuals at the World Bank. Several current Fellows also presented posters: Sabrina Arias  and Soohyun Cho  both presented work on environmental challenges in political economy related to lending and labor compliance, and Zoe Ge  presented new work on vaccine endorsement by the World Health Organization.

GradFUTURES

  Representatives from over 40 host organizations and campus partners mingled with graduate students and offered information on experiential learning opportunities. Photo: Sameer A. Khan / Fotobuddy

Graduate students found connections and opportunities at 2024 Fellowship & Internship Fair

More than 200 graduate students and experiential learning partners gathered at this year's GradFUTURES Internship-Fellowship Fair to discuss  opportunities  for students to gain vital experience while exploring professional paths. The event, which kicked off the  2024 GradFUTURES Forum on April 5, featured 41 campus offices and external organizations offering Princeton graduate students experiential learning options in academia, nonprofits, philanthropies, research organizations, and museums.

At the Fair – a free-range set-up where attendees circulated among tables within the reassuringly  earthquake-resistant  glass surroundings of the Frick Chemistry Atrium – Ananya Chakravarti, a graduate student in Chemical and Biological Engineering, was eager to explore “more service-oriented opportunities.” Chakravarti said, “I wanted to know about opportunities offered, including the Social Impact Fellowship (SIF), which is really unique to Princeton. I’m interested in more non-profit work, teaching, and mentorship.” She added, “In my area, most people don’t go into that.” 

Experiential learning hosts welcomed graduate students interested in crafting GradFUTURES fellowship experiences. Photo: Sameer A. Khan / Fotobuddy

Reece Edmends, a graduate student in Classics, was likewise drawn to the Fair to get a sense of opportunities. “I’m thinking about what to do after my Ph.D. graduation, and I’m exploring different professional pathways in the U.S.A." Edmends appreciated that, as an international student, he could benefit from various fellowships offered. The  Davis Center  was also on hand to guide international students who had questions about professional development opportunities.

Chakravarti reported that she connected with three external organizations and the  Program for Community College Engagement . She said she had not realized fellowships could be tailored to individual interests. “Because of the Fair, I hope to do a Social Impact Fellowship. I didn’t know they could build something I wanted to do and that a Fellowship didn’t have to be a big time commitment.” After discovering that SIFs involve only a ten-hour weekly commitment, Chakravarti plans to craft a fellowship that will bring together her interests in science communication and connecting underserved populations to STEM education. 

Ten members of the campus community received Clio Hall awards, which celebrate champions of graduate student professional development; pictured here are (L-R) Raghuveer Vinukollu *11 (CEE), Vanessa Silva, Sami Kahn, Rebecca Burdine, Rose Guingrich, GS, PSY, Christie Henry, Debbie Bisno, Christina Pellicane, and Debbie Godfrey *84 (PSY). Not pictured is Natalie Berkman *18 (FIT). Photo: Sameer A. Khan / Fotobuddy

There was also time for connection at the Clio Hall Awards ceremony, held after the Fair. This year’s  ten honorees  include alums, faculty members, a current graduate student, and community partners. For Natalie Miller, a graduate student in Music, the biggest draw of the Fair was the opportunity to connect with her  GradFUTURES mentor,  Debbie Godfrey *84 (Psychology). Until the Fair, Godfrey had been a virtual presence in her life, so Miller appreciated the opportunity to grab lunch and “celebrate” her mentor. “I’ve been working with Debbie for two to three years,” Miller said. “It was great meeting her in person.”

GradFUTURES Stories & News

University Center for Human Values

Ed Baring awarded Center for Digital Humanities Collaborative Research Grant

Associate Professor of History and Human Values Ed Baring was awarded a 2024-25 Center for Digital Humanities Collaborative Research Grant for his project, “Marxism’s Marx.”

In his proposal, Baring wrote:

The global success of Marxism is one of the most important developments in modern intellectual history. By the mid-twentieth century, Marxist ideas had come to inform thinkers and activists on every inhabited continent, with enormous consequences for local and global politics. However, the international diffusion of Marx’s texts and the appeal of his ideas around the world were by no means preordained, for Marx had focused his analytical attention on the economic histories and conditions of Western Europe. This project aims to build a resource that will help scholars study this development by allowing them to understand how Marxists globally drew from Marx’s corpus of writings.

Beginning in the Fall of 2024, the Center for Digital Humanities team will focus on developing methods for identifying quotations from Marx within a small subset of Marxist literature. The goal is to lay the methodological groundwork for the larger project of identifying the uses of Marx within a multilingual corpus of Marxist literature.

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Princeton University Library

African american studies faculty-graduate seminar.

• Black Speculative Futures 2022-2023
• Plantation Effects: Visual Ecologies of Race, Place and Labor 2021-2022
• “Writing the Impossible”: Black Studies and Critical Archival Praxis. 2020-2021
• Black Design: History, Theory, and Practice 2019-2020
• Surveilling Blackness: Race and the Maximum-Security Society 2018-2019

The Faculty-Graduate Seminar is an intimate intellectual community that comes together to discuss work in progress around a common theme across a wide range of disciplines affiliated with African American Studies (AAS). Each year, a faculty convener invites guest speakers to present work-in-progress connected to a specific theme. This guide includes books, articles, and other materials produced by previous speakers. When available, published scholarship directly related to a work-in-progress originally presented at the seminar is featured. The content is updated annually to include the most recent seminar. 

Participation in the African American Studies’ Faculty-Graduate Seminar for one academic year or the equivalent (two semesters) will fulfill one of the requirements for the  AAS Graduate Certificate . 

Previous Faculty-Graduate Seminars

Black Movement: Black Stillness 2023 – 2024 (LibGuide Page Forthcoming) 

Black Speculative Futures 2022 – 2023

Plantation Effects: Visual Ecologies of Race, Place and Labor 2021 – 2022

“Writing the Impossible”: Black Studies and Critical Archival Praxis. 2020 – 2021

Black Design: History, Theory, and Practice 2019 – 2020

Surveilling Blackness: Race and the Maximum-Security Society 2018 – 2019

• Next: Black Speculative Futures 2022-2023 >>
• Last Updated: Jul 10, 2024 7:48 PM
• URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=1390578

Master in Public Policy

The one-year, full-time residential Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree is for midcareer professionals who are rising leaders in international and domestic public affairs. Approximately 20 students are enrolled annually.

Fields of Study

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Alumni Spotlight: Benjamin Bradlow ’20 Ph.D. Sociology, Graduate Program in Development

Benjamin Bradlow, an alumnus of Watson's Graduate Program in Development (GPD), was recently awarded a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Global Scholars fellowship. Now an assistant professor at Princeton, his research focuses on the politics of urban inequality and the perils of the transition to a “green” economy in the Global South.

Benjamin Bradlow ’20 Ph.D. Sociology/GPD. Photo Credit: Azurae Cruz

Benjamin Bradlow, a 2020 alumnus of the Graduate Program in Development (GPD) with a Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology , was one of ten early career interdisciplinary faculty across the globe selected for the prestigious Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Azrieli Global Scholars fellowship in the research program on " Humanity's Urban Future ." Bradlow credited the GPD with teaching him to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries, "This award is part of my research trajectory that was enabled by my experience at Watson's GPD. From the very beginning of my doctoral studies, being part of the GPD enabled me to think about the work and methodologies of my discipline in relationship to a broader interdisciplinary approach." 

Bradlow returned to Brown in early April to speak at the Africa Initiative's conference, "Three Decades of South African Democracy: Promises, Perils, Potential." Currently an assistant sociology and international affairs professor at Princeton University, Bradlow was impressed by the event. "I don't know of any similar convenings with such varied reflections on South African democracy that have occurred in American academia in recent years," he said, "This was a quintessential Watson Institute event."

At the conference, Bradlow discussed findings from his forthcoming book that compares the politics of urban inequality in Johannesburg and São Paulo after transitions to democracy in South Africa and Brazil. Due to be released in late October by Princeton University Press, " Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg " is based on his dissertation and compares how the two cities govern housing and land use, sanitation, and collective transportation after each transitioned to democracy, and explains why democracy and local government both matter. 

According to Bradlow, urban social movements were at the heart of South Africa and Brazil's respective struggles for democracy. Through over a year of fieldwork in each country's largest city, Bradlow investigated how the interaction of local government bureaucrats, politicians, movements, and private sector actors shaped the differing trajectories of Johannesburg and São Paulo in reducing inequalities in the built environment over the past three decades.

In the book, Bradlow addresses long-standing questions about the relationship of local governments and governance with urban movements. He also reinforces an emerging call to examine cases in the Global South more seriously to develop a more global urban sociology.

Initially uncertain about what discipline he wanted to study as a doctoral candidate, Bradlow did know that he wanted to embrace development issues from a global perspective. Ultimately, the Watson Institute's Graduate Program in Development (GPD) inspired Bradlow to pursue a doctorate in sociology at Brown. 

"Brown University's sociology program has occupied a very distinct niche among departments in the United States in emphasizing questions of development and researching issues affecting other parts of the world, particularly in the Global South. It has long been concerned with comparison as a way to study social problems, and comparison has been central to the history of sociological methodologies," said Bradlow.

The way [GPD faculty] engaged with other faculty and graduate students helped me understand what building an intellectual community in and across the social sciences means. They helped me build my intellectual identity as an interdisciplinary social scientist and not only as a sociologist.

While at Brown, Bradlow was deeply impressed by GPD seminars that brought faculty from across the social science disciplines to discuss their empirical research. "The GPD exposed me to leaders in interdisciplinary social science work on development and what intellectual engagement with this kind of work looks like," said Bradlow. "The way Nitsan Chorev and Patrick Heller engaged with other faculty and graduate students helped me understand what building an intellectual community in and across the social sciences means. They helped me build my intellectual identity as an interdisciplinary social scientist and not only as a sociologist." 

In describing the conceptualization of his comparative analysis of São Paulo and Johannesburg, Bradlow said, "Watson encouraged me to be unconventional and ambitious. My experience was very unwieldy for a long time, but my faculty mentors were willing to support my journey to investigate cases in very different parts of the world." This included learning to speak Portuguese in order to do field research in Brazil. While Bradlow has long-standing family and professional ties to South Africa, he credits Professor of History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and former Director of Watson's Brazil Initiative James Green, whose conferences and seminars on Brazilian politics, history and culture instilled Bradlow's appreciation for and understanding of Brazil. 

Bradlow’s latest research, supported by Brown's Climate Social Science Network , is focused on the challenges of transitioning to "green" industry and manufacturing in middle-income countries in the Global South. "South Africa and Brazil have virtually no domestic demand for electric vehicles,” Bradlow explained. “Their internal combustion engine car manufacturing sectors, with significant global exports, have historically been critical drivers of economic development. Now, wealthy nations in the Global North are planning to transition to all-electric vehicles.” According to Bradlow, this represents a potentially existential crisis for each country's economy and for many workers and communities in the Global South. "This kind of transition problem is one of the thorniest issues in global climate politics and sociology. Do you prioritize development or climate? To what extent can they be pursued together? To what degree do they conflict? Who wins, and who loses?" he said.