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 and a Fellow at the
Governance and Local Development Institute.
My primary research agenda examines the historical evolution of Indigenous-state relations in Latin America—from independence to the present.
In my book (
The Long Shadow of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous Autonomy Demands), which is under contract at Princeton University Press, I examine how experiences with historical land and labor loss shaped Indigenous groups' demands for autonomy. 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. My research has also been awarded the
Leon Weaver best paper award by APSA's Representation and Electoral Systems section and an honorable mention for the Sage Best Paper Prize by APSA's Comparative Politics Section.
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 an 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.
