PACS Fellows

2009-2010 PhD Research Fellows

Mike Ananny (Ph.D. Candidate, Communication) studies networked public communication and, specifically, how digital technologies mediate between the press and publics.  His aim is to develop a contemporary model of press autonomy, looking for evidence of journalists’ independence from markets, states, and publics in two places: how they use and talk about technologies like online commenting systems, blogs, micro-blogs, and blog-ranking services in their work; and how news organizations and technology designers create application programming interfaces that let non-journalists design their own news feeds.  Ananny received a B.S. from the University of Toronto in Computer Science and Human Biology, M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, and was a founding member of the research staff at Media Lab Europe.

Amanda R. Greene (Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy) studies issues relating to global justice and value pluralism, including political legitimacy in multicultural societies, the implications of value-based disagreement, and ethical issues in international relations.  In her fellowship year, she will be researching the effects of foreign aid on individual autonomy and national autonomy.  Before her graduate studies she worked as a management consultant in the US, a philanthropy consultant in Mumbai, and a policy advisor in Australia.  Greene has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Columbia Law School and holds an M.Phil. in Philosophical Theology from Oxford University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Natalie Privett (Ph.D. Candidate, Management Science and Engineering) researches operations management in the nonprofit sector.  Her research projects span both theoretical and empirical works, each applying the theories and tools of operations and supply chain management in the areas of nonprofit funding, public health and humanitarian relief.  In her first project, Natalie uses contract theory to explore the potential role of auditing within nonprofit funding relationships.  In another project, she endeavors to develop revenue generating strategies for local public health departments through understanding and leveraging the influence of public health collaboration networks.  In yet another separate work, Natalie explores the unique risk profile facing humanitarian supply chains to determine optimal decisions and structure.  Natalie earned her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University.  Before coming to Stanford, she worked for Applied Materials in Austin, Texas.

Nandini Roy (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology) studies how the structural properties of inter-organizational networks between civic associations can affect solidarity and collective action outcomes in urban neighborhoods. She is also interested in assessing whether certain civic network structures have the potential to mitigate the levels of communal violence experienced in conflict-prone areas. Roy has earned an A.B. with honors in Economics and International Relations, and an A.M. in Sociology from Brown University. After working as a Campaign Director for Greenpeace for a year, she spent two years as a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the City University of Hong Kong before coming to Stanford.

2008-2009 PhD Research Fellows

Tara Béteille (PhD Candidate, Economics of Education) studies teacher accountability and local politics in India, focusing on the political and social structure in which teachers' positions as professionals conflict with the implicit rewards and sanctions of the educational accountability system. She also investigates teachers' responses to politicians' demands on them as community authority figures and potential political organizers. She came to Stanford from the Delhi School of Economics where she was among the first class of scholars to graduate from the program.

Béteille's interest in teacher labor markets dates to 2000, when she worked with ICICI Bank, India, managing their non-profit funding in education. Her work involved interacting with governmental and non-governmental groups; project appraisal and development; and overseeing research and evaluation. Her experiences over this period made her acutely aware of the range of political and bureaucratic processes governing policy outcomes, and the need to study teacher accountability as a systemic issue in order to frame effective policies.

Chris Bryan (PhD Candidate, Psychology) received his BA in psychology from McGill University in 2002 and began the PhD program in social psychology in the fall of 2003. He is currently in his fifth year of that program, working with Professors Lee Ross and Carol Dweck. He is interested in the study of social and political attitudes: specifically, in the ways in which such attitudes are often more dynamic and malleable than they are traditionally thought to be. In his fellowship year, he will focus on attitudes about poverty and test an experimental intervention designed to influence people's willingness to engage in charitable giving.

Roy Elis (PhD Candidate, Political Science) studies the effects of political institutions on economic development. His research employs a comparative history of Argentina and the United States to tease out the effects of political institutions on land rights, taxation and public schooling as three important dimensions of economic development. Before coming to Stanford, Elis taught middle school mathematics for three years in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City - an experience that both sparked his interest in the politics of public education and led him to study political science in the first place.

Paul Gowder (PhD Candidate, Political Science) studies a variety of issues in normative political theory that can perhaps best be summarized as "reason, rationality, discourse and toleration in democracy." He is currently exploring several different approaches to the general question of how citizens ought to reason about both their fundamental commitments and about practical political disputes. Before coming to Stanford, Gowder studied law (JD 2000) at Harvard and spent several years providing low-income legal services and doing grassroots community organizing in Oregon. He also spent two years practicing civil rights and civil liberties law in the Washington, D.C. area.

Kaisa Snellman (PhD Candidate, Organizational Sociology) studies the relationship between neighborhood civic infrastructure and collective civic action. During the fellowship year, she will investigate the role of non-profits and religious organizations as catalysts for civic action. She is interested in how the founding context of an organization influences its capacity to foster civic action. In particular, Snellman will examine the hypothesis that organizations founded during the civil rights era are more likely to have a larger impact on collective action in the neighborhood than organizations founded in more recent years.

Snellman has earned a MA in Sociology from Stanford and a MSc in Economics from the Swedish School of Economics in Finland. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she was a research assistant in the department for investigate journalism in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in Finland.

Megan Tompkins (PhD Candidate, Education, and MA candidate, Sociology) studies the role of philanthropy and private sector actors on public school reform, and is engaged in three primary research projects: one looking at the rise of the nonprofit charter school management organization; another on the diffusion of social entrepreneurship as a model for nonprofit sector practice; and a third analyzing the impact of philanthropic foundations on California public school finance policy. She is broadly interested in normative issues in civil society and the nonprofit sector, particularly the increasingly overlapping boundaries between the for-profit and non-profit sectors.

Tompkins has a BA with Honors from Stanford and an EdM from Harvard University. Prior to starting the PhD, she worked for four years in higher education administration at Stanford, including as assistant director of undergraduate admissions and special assistant to the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.

2007-2008 PhD Research Fellows

Rekha Balu (PhD Candidate, Economics of Education) studies school access, quality, and finance in developing countries. She is examining the resilience of schools in countries in conflict and is interested in how both local civil society and international donor agencies consider and support education as a resource during conflict.

Balu first began to explore the role of education during civil conflict while completing her Ed.M. at Harvard University (2003), and as a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala studying the distribution of education programs after the country's peace accords. While working as Associate Director at the Center for Universal Education for two years in Washington DC, she monitored international donor financing and programs to support basic education in developing countries and fragile states.

Joon Nak Choi '09 (PhD Candidate, Economics/Organizational Sociology) studies policy networks in the United States and Asia. He is interested in how charitable foundations' financial contributions to nonprofit policy research organizations (think tanks) affect American politics. Choi became interested in policy networks while conducting research under Gi-wook Shin (Director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center) and Mark Granovetter (Stanford University Department of Sociology). He has earned a MA in Sociology from Stanford University (2005) and an AB in International Relations, Economics and Urban Studies from Brown University (2000).

Hilary Schaffer (PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources) researches the environmental and social impacts associated with energy development and public participation in environmental decision-making; in particular, the siting of liquefied natural gas terminals in California. Prior to joining the IPER PhD program, Schaffer worked for three years as a senior project engineer in the environment and regulatory group at the ExxonMobil Development Company. In this role, she supervised the research, writing and publication of the socioeconomic sections of environmental impact assessments submitted to the Russian government for the Sakhalin-1 Project and directed the associated public consultation program. In addition, she managed regulatory compliance issues related to the construction of a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Northern Italy and devised waste management and hydrogen sulfide plans for the Four Corners production field on the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, Utah.

2006-2007 PhD Research Fellows

Ed Bruera (PhD Candidate Political Science) studies the distributional politics of AIDS drugs in Africa. He is interested in how the efforts of non-governmental organizations affect the delivery of AIDS-related services in South Africa. Bruera became interested in questions of AIDS and politics after doing a fellowship at the University of Cape Town in 2005. He studied political science and philosophy at Rice University, and worked for a year after college as a research intern at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Tricia Martin (PhD Candidate, International & Comparative Education) studies the rise of information networks as a tool for organizing social change among civil society organizations. She is studying the changes in the role of expert knowledge in the field of international development through a cross-national, longitudinal analysis. Martin became interested in global civil society while completing a Master of Science in International Studies at Rutgers University (2001). There, she worked as a research assistant for the World Orders Model Project, a non-profit that aims to stimulate research and dialogue promoting a just world order. In 2001, she moved to San Francisco to work in the Education Program of the World Affairs Council where she spent four years helping create programs about international issues for high school teachers and students.

Rand Quinn (PhD Candidate, Education) studies the social justice nonprofit sector, in particular the relationship between public schools and philanthropy and its impact on district accountability. He is interested in understanding how the introduction of philanthropic reform efforts affect school district accountability structures, norms, and practices. Before Stanford, Quinn was a community organizer and policy analyst working on welfare rights and public benefits issues. Among his prior positions, he was the executive director of Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network (SIREN) and the public policy director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights (NCCIR).

Nicholas Switanek (PhD Candidate, Organizational Behavior, GSB), focuses on "new wave environmentalism," which reaches out to for-profit organizations with sustainable practices to collaborate with philanthropic organizations. He studies how changes in the composition of the field of organizations concerned with environmental issues affect how environmental problems and their potential solutions are perceived. In particular he is exploring the interaction of environmental grantmaking and environmental social movement organizations. Before pursuing his doctorate, Switanek studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Arizona, and worked in financial and Internet-based services in Beijing, China. His experiences in China impressed upon him the importance of influences across the boundaries between market, state, and non-governmental, non-market actors.