Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

People

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People

Director

  • Professor David Skarbek

    David Skarbek

    Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Michael Targoff Professor of Political Economy
    david_skarbek@brown.edu
    Website

    David Skarbek is the Michael Targoff Professor of Political Economy and the inaugural Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Brown University. His research studies the political economy of institutions and development, with a focus on criminal governance. He has published extensively on the informal institutions that govern life in prisons in California and around the globe. Professor Skarbek's work has appeared in leading journals in political science, economics, and criminology, including in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, and Journal of Criminal Justice. His work has been featured widely in national and international media outlets, such as the Atlantic, BBC, Business Insider, the Economist, Forbes, the Independent, and the Times. 

    His book, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System (Oxford University Press), received the American Political Science Association’s 2016 William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy in the previous three years. It was also awarded the 2014 Best Publication Award from the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime and was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s 2014 Ethnography Award.

    Skarbek's second book, The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies around the World (Oxford University Press), won the Outstanding Book Award from sections of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Studies. It was also co-winner of the Best Book Award from the International Association of Organized Crime.

Associate Director

  • Melvin Rogers

    Melvin Rogers

    Associate Director, Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science
    melvin_rogers@brown.edu
    Website

    Melvin Rogers is Professor of Political Science at Brown University. He has wide-ranging interests in contemporary democratic theory and the history of American and African-American political thought. 

    He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2008) and The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2023). He is the editor of John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (Ohio University Press, 2016) and co-editor (with Jack Turner) of African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press, 2021), a collection of 30 essays on figures in the tradition of African American political thought. His articles have appeared in major academic journals and popular venues such as Dissent, the Atlantic, Public Seminar, and Boston Review. 

    In addition to his published writings, Professor Rogers serves as the co-editor of the Oxford New Histories of Philosophy book series. The series focuses on the unattended voices in the history of philosophy.
    He received an M.Phil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2006. 

     

PPE Professors

  • Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy

    Ryan Doody

    Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy
    ryan_doody@brown.edu
    Website

     

    Ryan Doody is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy at Brown University. Previously he held positions at the University of San Diego, UNC Chapel Hill, the University of Groningen, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ryan received his PhD in philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work deals with questions of rationality and value. He has a specialism in decision theory. Ryan's current research focuses on incommensurability, social risk, and public policy. 

  • Simone

    Simone Gubler

    Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy
    simone_gubler@brown.edu

    Simone Gubler is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy at Brown University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Nevada, Reno. Originally trained as a lawyer in her home country of Australia, Simone received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019. Her philosophical work addresses questions at the intersection of moral psychology, normative ethics, political theory, and the philosophy of law. She has a particular interest in the relationship between morality and public institutions and the ways in which moral and economic thought intersect. She is currently working on a book project that offers novel philosophical justifications for New Deal policies like the minimum wage and limited working week. Another strand of her research deals with the concept of forgiveness. Against the prevailing view that forgiveness is a positive value, Simone urges a skeptical attitude.

  • Professor Emily Skarbek

    Emily Skarbek

    Associate Professor, Research, Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Research Seminar
    emily_skarbek@brown.edu
    Website

    Emily Skarbek is Associate Research Professor in the Political Theory Project at Brown University. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in 2009. Her research examines civil society, governance, and history of economic thought. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Public Choice, Journal of Institutional Economics, and American Journal of Economics and Sociology. In 2014, she was awarded the annual Gordon Tullock prize for best article published in Public Choice by a junior scholar. She is also a contributing author to several books including After Katrina: The Political Economy of Disaster and Community Rebound and Hayek and the Modern World.

  • Felipe Pic

    Felipe Valencia Caicedo

    Assistant Professor of Economics
    felipe.valencia@ubc.ca
    Personal Website

    I am an Assistant Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, in Canada. My primary research interests are in Economic History, Development Economics and Political Economy. My current research on historical conflict is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

    I am also a Research Affiliate of CEPR (EH, POE and Preventing Conflict) , the Kiel Institute and IZA, a member of the Editorial Board of the Economic History of Developing Regions journal,  the Scientific Committee of RIDGE and co-head of the LACEA-EHN.

    I obtained my Ph.D. in Economics from UPF in 2015 through the EDP (visiting the LSE). My dissertation, supervised by Hans-Joachim Voth was awarded the Enrique Fuentes Quintana prize for best thesis in the Social Sciences in Spain.  Before joining the VSE I worked at the Department of Economics and the Macrohistory Lab at Bonn University. I have visited Brown and Harvard's Economics Departments.

Postdoctoral Fellows

  • Tarana Chauhan

    Tarana Chauhan

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate

    Tarana Chauhan is an applied micro economist studying questions at the intersection of labor, gender and development, and climate change and development. Her research examines the distributional effects of various events, such as economic policy changes or extreme weather events. Employing econometric techniques on publicly available datasets, these papers rigorously evaluate current policies and identify potential gaps. Before the Ph.D., she helped evaluate a program on maternal and child health and nutrition with the International Food Policy Research Institute in India. She completed my Master's in Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and received a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Delhi (Lady Shri Ram College for Women). She enjoys learning new dance styles and hiking. 

     

  • PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Kaitlyn Chriswell, PhD in Government, Harvard University

    Kaitlyn Chriswell

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Kaitlyn Chriswell, PhD in Government, Harvard University

    Kaitlyn is interested in the intersection of political violence, civil society, and democracy with a regional interest in Latin America. In her book project, she asks how the presence of criminal groups affects whether and how citizens interact with the state. Her analysis is based on a mixed-methods study of municipalities across Mexico. Kaitlyn earned her PhD in Government from Harvard University and a B.A. in Political Science and Spanish from Northwestern University. Her research has been supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace, National Science Foundation, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, among others.

  • Durr

    Bréond Durr

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Bréond Durr, Ph.D. from Harvard University

    Bréond is a philosopher whose interests are in the legal, social, and political dimensions of the built-environment. His current research focuses on the material and symbolic elements of our punitive practices. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University and B.A. from the University of Southern California

  • Maximiliano Garcia

    Maximiliano Garcia

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate

    Hi! I am Max Garcia, I received my PhD at Boston University. I am an applied microeconomist, working on Development, Political Economy and Environmental Economics. I completed my BA and MA in Economics at the University of Chile. 

    I am currently investigating how climate change impacts are mediated by institutions. Starting from the analysis of the institutions governing water usage and property in Chile, I show the effects of property rights enforcement on the distribution of water under private property. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, length and intensity of events of water scarcity. If you want to know more, please reach out!

  • PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Gabriella Levy

    Gabriella Levy

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Gabriella Levy

    Gabriella Levy is a political scientist whose research explores the ways in which people interpret, evaluate, and respond to various forms of political violence, ranging from wartime civilian targeting to vigilantism to extortion of migrants. Her work focuses on Latin America; primarily uses survey methodology; and draws on research in international relations, comparative politics, and political psychology. Her research is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Politics and Comparative Political Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University in the summer of 2023.

Graduate Fellows

  • Manuel Moscoso Rojas

    Manuel Moscoso Rojas

    PPE Center Graduate Fellow
    Manuel is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Brown University, specializing in comparative politics and research methods. His research interests include war-to-peace transitions and the politics of policing. He focuses on designing and evaluating crime prevention initiatives and programs that promote the (re)integration of police authorities into society. Most of his work employs a quantitative approach, utilizing both experimental and observational methods. He holds a B.A. and M.Sc. in Economics from Universidad Javeriana and an M.A. in Political Science from Brown University.
  • Leja

    Leja Joe Mathew

    PPE Center Graduate Fellow

    Leja is a fourth year graduate student in the department of political science. Her doctoral research aims to understand how public policies such as curricula and land reform impact identity in India. 

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Center Staff

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