Welcome

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and John L. Nau III Assistant Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. I am also a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development at the University of California, Berkeley. In my book project, I examine the emergence as well as the political and social effects of indigenous rights in the Americas. The research for this project won the 2020 APSA Best Fieldwork Award and the 2021 Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy. I also have published or have forthcoming work on local governance in Latin America, methods for causal inference, and the regulation of gig economy labor in the United States. All of my work employs a multi-method approach, using experimental and natural experimental data as well as extensive interviewing and archival research.

My CV can be found here.

I was previously Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. I completed a Master's in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge as a Gates-Cambridge scholar, and I hold a B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I studied as a Morehead-Cain scholar.

I can be reached at christopher.carter@virginia.edu.