Principal Organizers
Miguel Centeno
Miguel Angel Centeno is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2003 to 2007, he served as the founding Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. From 1997-2004 he also served as Master of Wilson College at Princeton. He has published many books as author or editor including Democracy within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico (2nd. 1997), Blood and Debt: War and Statemaking in Latin America (2002), The Other Mirror: Grand Theory and Latin America, (2000), and Essays in Latin American Military History (2006). He is currently working on several book projects including: Paper Leviathans: Liberalism in the Iberian World (Penn State Press), Global Capitalism (Polity), and War and Society (Polity). Through the Mapping Globalization project (http://qed.princeton.edu/index.php/MG ) he has worked on improving the quantitative scholarship available on globalization. In 2000, he founded the Princeton University Preparatory Program, which provides intensive supplemental training for lower income students in three local high schools. For this work, he was recently awarded the Jefferson Award for Public Service and the Bonner Foundation Award. From 1980 to 1985 he worked in advertising and private marketing consulting dealing with the US Hispanic Market.
He obtained his BA in History in 1980, his MBA in 1987 and his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1990, all from Yale University. He has received grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and has been a Fulbright scholar in Russia and Mexico. He has also been a Visiting Professor in Buenos Aires, Seoul, and the University of Salamanca. In 1997 he was awarded the Presidential Teaching Prize at Princeton University. In 2005 he was elected to the Sociological Research Association as well as the Comparative Historical Section Council of the ASA.
Atul Kohli
Atul Kohli is the David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His principal research interests are in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on the developing countries. He is the author of State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (winner of the Charles Levine Award (2005) of the International Political Science Association); Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability; The State and Poverty in India; and the editor of six volumes: The State and Development in the Third World; India's Democracy; State Power and Social Forces; Community Conflicts and the State in India; The Success of India's Democracy; States, Markets and Just Growth. He has also published some fifty articles. His current research focuses on the topic of "imperialism and the developing world." He is the Chief Editor of World Politics. He has received grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation. Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley.
Deborah J. Yashar
Deborah J. Yashar is Professor of Politics and International Affairs. She is also co-director of the Project on Democracy and Development. Her research focuses on the intersection of democracy and citizenship – with publications on the origins and endurance of political regimes; the relationship between citizenship regimes, local autonomy, and ethnic politics; collective action and contentious politics; interest representation and party systems; and globalization. She is the author of two books: Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Stanford University Press, 1997) and Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge University Press, 2005) – which received the 2006 Best Book Prize, awarded by the New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS) and the 2006 Mattei Dogan Honorable Mention, awarded by the Society for Comparative Research. She has also written several articles published in leading journals and edited volumes.
She is currently writing a book, tentatively entitled Violence, Citizenship, and Public Security in Post-Authoritarian Latin America. This research project sets out to explain both the contemporary rise in violent crime and the uneven record of Latin America’s third wave democracies to provide public security and rule of law. By systematically comparing three critical state institutions (the police, attorney general’s office, and the judiciary) in countries with high and low levels of violence, this book aims to advance theoretical debates about the contours of democracy, the varied ability of states to secure a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and the implications of contemporary violence for democratic citizenship.