Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

People

Director

  • Professor David Skarbek

    David Skarbek

    Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Michael Targoff Professor of Political Economy

    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

  • Bernard

    Bernard M. Reginster

    Associate Director, Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Romeo Elton Professor of Natural Theology

    Bernard Reginster received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He taught at Loyola Marymount University before coming to Brown in 1994.

    Reginster's research has focused mostly on issues in ethics, metaethics, and moral psychology in 19th century German philosophy. He has published a number of articles on Nietzsche and on 19th century ethics. His book, The Affirmation of Life, published in 2006 by Harvard University Press, offers a comprehensive interpretation of Nietzsche's ethical thought and includes substantial new interpretations of some of his immediate predecessors, particularly Schopenhauer.

    Professor Reginster's new research interests include the topics of identity and intersubjectivity, for which he considering ideas from psychoanalytic theory, 20th century Continental philosophy, and contemporary Anglo-Saxon philosophy. In this connection, he has written a substantial paper on Sartre and shorter pieces on recent work on subjectivity and intersubjectivity in Anglo-Saxon philosophy. 

PPE Professors

  • Mark L. Shapiro and Judy C. Lewent Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy

    Ryan Doody

    Mark L. Shapiro and Judy C. Lewent Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy

     

    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 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 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

    Dean's Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Economics

    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. 

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. 

     

  • Maximiliano Garcia

    Maximiliano Garcia

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate
    I am Max Garcia, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Brown University Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. I am an applied microeconomist, working on Development, Political Economy, and Environmental Economics. I received my PhD in Economics from Boston University. Previously, I completed my BA and MA in Economics at the University of Chile.
     
    I am currently investigating how institutions mediate farmers' responses to changing climate conditions. 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. We are expecting an increase in the frequency, length, and intensity of water scarcity events.


     

  • Samuel Schmitt

    Samuel Schmitt

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate

    Sam Schmitt is a political theorist whose research combines normative philosophy with a deep understanding of institutions and diverse perspectives to examine questions at the intersection of contemporary political theory, religion, and political economy. In his book project, Sam analyzes several religious objections to market-oriented liberalism to advance reforms which make market society more open to more ways of life, religious or not. His other projects include developing a realistic account of character and ethics for politicians and improving political science and PPE curricula for civic outcomes. Sam earned his PhD in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Bowling Green State University. 

  • Timothy Tennyson

    Timothy Tennyson

    PPE Center Postdoctoral Research Associate

    Tim is a political theorist whose research focuses on civic education and citizenship in the history of political thought and contemporary political theory. In particular, he is interested in the pedagogical, moral, and political assumptions that inform past and present conceptions of civic education in liberal-democratic states. His current work examines judgment as a civic educational outcome in modern and contemporary educational and political theory. Tim earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and BA in Political Science from Carthage College.

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PPE Society