Oren Samet is pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics and comparative democratization, with a particular focus on political transitions, parties, and elections in Southeast Asia. Before coming to Berkeley, he worked in various roles for non-governmental organizations in Thailand, including as Research and Advocacy Director for ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a network of regional legislators. He previously worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie...
Blaze Joel is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on nationalism, memory, violence, and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. He studies these issues in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country, as well as in an international, trans-European framework. He also studies the Cold War in a global perspective.
Shawn Ewbank is an MPA Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley's Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy. He is focused on societal transformation towards peace, specifically in the context of climate change, technology, democracy and economy.
Sarayut holds Ph.D. in Accountancy in the University of Exeter, UK. His interests include the implications of information technology for public finance, economic policy, financial regulations, renewable energy, and political architecture. He also focuses on how to develop optimal public policies to respond to such implications.
Karely Ordaz is a public sector leader with close to a decade working for the public good in both local government and community-based organizations. She holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley in American Studies with a concentration in Environment, Policy and Public Health. She was born in Mexico and immigrated to the U.S. at age 4.
In her role as Chief of Staff at a community development corporation (CDC), she leads the organization’s policy and advocacy priorities focused on achieving social equity. Prior to that she worked for an anchor institution in San Francisco...
Matthew Stenberg is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Central Europe and the European Union. His research interests include democratic backsliding, local politics, and multilevel party politics.
Tara Chandra is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on gender and international security, particularly why and how insurgents target women. She is also interested in the causes and consequences of political violence more generally across different contexts.
Thad Dunning is the Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the founding faculty director of the Center on Politics of Development and authored several award-winning books, including Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes and Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach, both of which received Best Book Awards from the American Political Science Association. Prof. Dunning studies comparative politics, the political economy of development, and research methods,...
Surili Sheth is pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests center on identities (such as gender, religion, and caste), public service delivery, local institutions and inequality in South Asia and the United States. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Surili worked as a fellow with IMAGO Global Grassroots in Ahmedabad and Delhi, a manager with IDinsight in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, and Delhi, and a research associate with the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in Hyderabad, India. In these capacities, she has worked with SEWA,...
Adan Martinez is pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on comparative politics, political economy, and political behavior in Latin America. His research interests include the provision of public goods, class and ethnic cleavages, and political behavior addressing public good disparities. Prior to starting his doctoral program, Martinez spent time working at his alma mater as a fundraiser and a legislative assistant in the Minnesota state legislature. He received his B.A in Political Science and Latin American Studies from...
