ISERP Co-DirectorProfessor of Economics and Political ScienceAlessandra Casella is professor of Economics at Columbia University and a fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge), and the Center for Economic Policy Research (London). She received her PhD in Economics from MIT in 1989, taught at UC Berkeley before moving to Columbia in 1993, and held the position of Directeur d’ Etudes (temps partiel) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales (EHESS) (Paris and Marseilles) from 1996 to 2010. Her main research interests are political economy, public economics, and experimental economics. Casella has been the recipient of numerous fellowships: she has been a Guggenheim fellow, a member of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, a Russell Sage fellow, and a Straus fellow at the NYU Law School. Her book "Storable Votes. Protecting the Minority Voice" was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. Casella is Director of the Columbia Laboratory for the Social Sciences.
Adam Kosto (BA Yale 1989, MPhil Cambridge 1990, PhD Harvard 1996) is Professor of History at Columbia University. He specializes in the institutional history of medieval Europe, with particular interests in legal and documentary cultures. Publications include Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000-1200 (Cambridge, 2001), Hostages in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), and (as co-editor) Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2012). He is currently co-editing a volume for the Cambridge History of International Law. He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and a member of the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique.
Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs; Dean of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and SciencesMiguel Urquiola is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University, where he also chairs the Columbia Committee on the Economics of Education. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Fellow at the Bureau for Research in Development Economics (BREAD).
Urquiola’s research is on the Economics of Education, with a focus on understanding how schools and universities compete, and how they form reputations for quality. It also covers how parents and students select educational providers, and the consequences such choices have on sorting and labor market outcomes.
His past appointments include: Vice Dean at the School of International and Public Affairs (Columbia), Co-editor at the Journal of Human Resources, Visiting Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, Assistant Professor of Economics at Cornell, Young Professional at the World Bank, and Assistant Professor at the Bolivian Catholic University.
Jess Benhabib is a professor at New York University, and known for his contributions to growth theory and sunspot equilibria. Benhabib earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1976. He started his teaching career as an assistant professor at University of Southern California. In 1980, he became an associate professor at New York University and remained there ever since. Between 1984 and 1987 he served as Chairman of the Economics Department at NYU. Benhabib has also been a co-editor of the renowned Journal of Economic Theory.
Professor of Sociomedical SciencesJennifer Hirsch's principal areas of expertise are gender, sexuality, and reproductive health, U.S.-Mexico migration and migrant health, the comparative anthropology of love, and the applications of anthropological theory and methods to public health research and programs. She has published articles in journals such as American Journal of Public Health, Studies in Family Planning, AIDS, and Culture Health and Sexuality. Her books include A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families (University of California Press, 2003), which explores changing ideas and practices of love, sexuality and marriage among Mexicans in the U.S. and in Mexico, and the coauthored The Secret: Love, Marriage and HIV (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), which analyzes the social organization of extramarital sexual practices in Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Papua-New Guinea and the implications of those practices for married women's HIV risk. Along with Dr. Claude Ann Mellins, Hirsch currently co-directs the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT), which is a study supported by the Office of the President that examines sexual health and sexual assault among Columbia and Barnard undergraduates.
Carnegie Professor of Public AffairsKenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs and the Vice-President for Global Centers. He taught Political Science at the University of Chicago from 1965-1982, and for shorter stints was on the faculty of Stanford University, Washington University, the University of Nairobi, Makerere University and the Graduate Faculty at the New School University (where he was also Dean).
Prewitt's professional career also includes: Director of the United States Census Bureau, Director of the National Opinion Research Center, President of the Social Science Research Council, and Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Russell-Sage Foundation, and member of other professional associations, including the Council on Foreign Relations. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Southern Methodist University, a Distinguished Service Award from the New School for Social Research, the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany, the Charles E. Merriam Lifetime Career Award, American Political Science Association and a Lifetime National Associate of the NRC/NAS.
Prewitt holds a BA from Southern Methodist University (1958); MA from Washington University (1959), Harvard Divinity School (1960) as a Danforth fellow; PhD from Stanford University (1963).
Harriet Zuckerman received her A.B. degree from Vassar College and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She was professor of sociology at Columbia and chaired the department in 1978–1982. In 1991, she joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, of which she is the Senior Vice President.Zuckerman's research has focused on the social organization of science and scholarship. She is the author of the 1977 book, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States. This book, in addition to being a study of a scientific elite, constitutes a fascinating introduction to the phenomenon of multiple discovery, particularly in science and technology. Its findings, particularly in relation to "accumulation of advantage", are relevant to the question of eminence, exceptional achievement, and greatness.Zuckerman was married to the late sociologist of science, Robert K. Merton. As a result of the Matilda effect, Zuckerman is also credited by Merton as the co-author of the Matthew effect.
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