Fotini Christia

Fotini Christia is the Ford International Professor in the Social Sciences. She received her PhD in public policy at Harvard University in 2008 and has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among others. Her research interests deal with issues of conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world, and she has worked out of Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, the Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia and most recently Syria and Yemen. She is presently using cellphone and social media data in ongoing research on refugee return in Syria, and on gender-based violence in Egypt during Covid-19.

Her book, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars, published by Cambridge University Press, has received numerous awards, including the Luebbert Award for Best Book in Comparative Politics, the Lepgold Prize for Best Book in International Relations, and the Distinguished Book Award of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies Association. Her research has also appeared in many notable journals, among them Science, Review of Economic Studies, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, and in the American Political Science Review. Prof. Christia has written opinion pieces for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint BA in economics-operations research and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University.