Comparative Politics

Research Interest

Anirvan Chowdhury

Graduate Student
Political Science
Center on the Politics of Development

Anirvan Chowdhury is a graduate student at UC Berkeley’s department of political science. His broad research interests lie in comparative politics and the political economy of development. His current projects centre on women’s political mobilisation and collective action, ideology in political parties, and public service delivery. Prior to this, Chowdhury worked at the International Food Policy Research Institute and the World Bank in Washington DC, and at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India. He has studied economics and public policy at the Madras School of...

Leonardo Arriola

Associate Professor
Political Science
Center on the Politics of Development

Leonardo Arriola is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Director of Berkeley's Center for African Studies and co-editor of Africa Spectrum, a peer-reviewed journal published by the GIGA Institute of African Affairs. Prof. Arriola studies democratization, coalition politics, ethnic politics and political violence in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Chai Peddeti

Graduate Student
Nuclear Engineering

Chai Peddeti is a first year PhD student in the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in Nuclear Materials. His work involves analyzing irradiated material using various laser-based spectroscopy techniques. Peddeti is interested in non-proliferation, nuclear policy relating to nuclear materials, global relations, and nuclear security.

Anthony Morreale

Graduate Student
History

Anthony Morreale is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on Southeast Asia.. His dissertation researches the history of Vietnamese nationalism and Sinophobia. His interests span Southeast Asian political and social history, and he also translates Vietnamese literature into English.

Meiqing Li

Graduate Student
City and Regional Planning

Meiqing Li is a PhD student in City and Regional Planning at University of California, Berkeley. She studies the intersection of sustainable transportation planning, travel behavior, and built environment in the US and Asia.

Philip Rogers

Graduate Student
Political Science

Philip Rogers is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of California, who studies political economy with a focus on China. His research draws upon the nexus of law, policy, and business to study corporate regulation and technological innovation in domestic and international contexts. Before coming to Berkeley, he worked on transnational corporate law cases as a paralegal at the Shanghai office of Zhong Lun Law Firm.

Varsha Venkatasubramanian

Graduate Student
History

Varsha Venkatasubramanian is a graduate student in the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the history of dams in the United States and the World as it relates to foreign policy, policy history, environmental movements, and legal history. Her dissertation focuses on U.S.-India relations and infrastructure projects during the 1950s to the 1980s.

Joe Greenbaum

Graduate Student
Political Science

Joe Greenbaum is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies comparative political and economic development. He works on questions surrounding resource and waste politics, and the environmental and social effects that attend these.

Daniel Balke

Graduate Student
Political Science

Daniel Balke is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the political economy of international development and civil conflict, with a focus on strategic interaction between multilateral development banks and aid recipients, and the role of financial incentives in shaping recipient compliance with aid conditions.

Vanessa Navarro-Rodriguez

Graduate Student
Political Science

Vanessa is a Ph.D. student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, studying gendered violence and international relations. Her research currently examines the prevalence of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by peacekeepers during UN peacekeeping operations.