Katherine Bersch
Dr. Bersch’s research is broadly focused on democratic quality in developing countries, with an emphasis on governance reform and state capacity in Latin America. While at ISID, she plans to complete her book-length manuscript on governance reform and expand her work on the State Capacity Project. The book manuscript, “When Democracies Deliver: Governance Reform in Latin America," explains the political conditions under which democratic states are able to make progress in reform and state building. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Politics, Governance, the European Journal of Development Research, Information Polity, and in Miguel Centeno, Atul Kohli, and Deborah Yashar's volume, States in the Developing World. She holds a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.
Moyukh Chatterjee
As an anthropologist of South Asia, Dr. Chatterjee analyzes how regimes perform spectacular violence against minorities in ways that deepen their political power and public legitimacy. Chatterjee’s research offers an account of how democratic states like India are able to purge themselves of public violence against minorities. At ISID, Chatterjee is working on a book, tentatively titled, “Chronicle of a Riot Foretold: Spectacular Violence and State Formation in India.” It is based on eighteen months of fieldwork in the capital city of Gujarat, Ahmedabad, which included collecting survivor’s testimony, accompanying them to the courts, and tracking the work of human rights activists. Chatterjee joined ISID in 2015 as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Governance. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Emory University.
S.P. Harish
Dr. Harish specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on state capacity, nation-building, political violence and energy access, especially in Southeast and South Asia. His dissertation research examines factors that exacerbate gender, ethnic and geographical divides within a country, and how states overcome these societal rifts. At ISID, he is working on a book project on the effect of pre-colonial institutions in Southeast Asia. Using a combination of qualitative, quantitative and archival data, he studies how pre-colonial institutions continue to play a key role in the economic and political arena in the region. The findings of this book has implications for state-formation, economic growth and democratic rule for post-colonial countries.
Eric Hirsch
Dr. Hirsch is an anthropologist whose research examines development and the political concepts of sustainability, resilience, and inclusion in rural and urban Latin America. He has published articles on extraction, urban migration, climate change in Peru and the Maldives, and Andean public space. While at ISID, he is working on a book tentatively titled “Investing in Indigeneity: Development, Inclusion, and the Politics of Uneven Abundance in Andean Peru.” Based on over two years’ total of longitudinal ethnography in Peru, this book investigates the relationship between small-scale development financing, environmental adaptation, and the economic making of indigenous lives in Andean Peru’s Arequipa region. Hirsch holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.
