Sam earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research focuses on issues in applied ethics and political philosophy. He believes that bioethics is best done from an interdisciplinary, empirically informed and evidenced standpoint. At the broadest level, his research asks, “What does it mean to honor an individual’s consent?” His work has been published in Bioethics, the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Social Theory and Practice, Metaphilosophy, and more. 

Anthony Gregory is a political, legal, and intellectual historian whose research explores the construction of American state power through both cooperation and coercion. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His publications on constitutionalism, legal theory, and national security policy address questions from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. He currently focuses on modern America and is writing a book on how the New Deal war on crime built and legitimated modern government and transformed American liberalism.  

Lowry Pressly received a Ph.D. in political theory from Harvard University. His research interests include ethics, political philosophy, theories of action, and the politics of self-knowledge. He is currently at work on a book on privacy and the value of being unknown both to others and to oneself. His other projects include work on agency, shame, tech ethics, and a second book project on the value of being a stranger.

Emilie earned her Ph.D. in Economics at CREST-ENSAE and visited the Department of Economics at Harvard University. She earned her B.A. in Economics and Sociology from Pantheon-Sorbonne University before receiving her M.A. in Economics from ENSAE, Ecole Polytechnique and Sciences Po Paris. Her research lies at the intersection of public economics and political economy, with a particular focus on political representation, extremism and partisan segregation. Her work has been presented at several international conferences, including NBER Political Economy Program Meeting, CEPR, CESifo, Royal Economic Society Conference, among others. 

Jessie's research interests include political economy of development, policing, crime, corruption, and clientelism. Her book project, Machine Gun Politics: Why Politicians Cooperate with Organized Crime, explains why politicians and criminal organizations cooperate peacefully, drawing from a mixed-methods study of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her scholarship has won awards at the American Political Science Association (APSA), Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and Public Choice Society, and has been published in World Development and Economia. Jessie's research has been generously supported by the Corporación Andino de Fomiento (CAF),  Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), Harvard Brazil Cities Initiative, and the Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative (FHB). Jessie received her PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2022 and will begin a position as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2023. 

Jessie will be joining the PTPas a Postdoctoral Fellow in late summer 2022.

Pawel Charasz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. His research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics, political economy, and economic history, with a geographic focus on Central and Eastern Europe. In his work, Pawel studies the long-run effects of institutions and political processes on economic and political development, with an emphasis on cities and municipalities. His dissertation explores the role of historical city charters in promoting development. Pawel’s work has been published in European Union Politics and received the SAGE Award for the Best Article Published in EUP in 2021. His research has been supported by, among others, the Economic History Association, and the Social Science Research Institute at Duke University. Pawel has graduated with a BSc in Economics from Tilburg University, an MSc in International Political Economy from Nanyang Technological University, and an MA in Economics from Duke University. 

Pawel will be joining the PTP as a Postdoctoral Fellow in late summer 2022.