Emily Russell

Emily Russell is the Gerhard Casper postdoctoral fellow at CDDRL. She received her Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University, focusing on comparative politics.

Emily’s dissertation project examined the role of the police in enforcing economic order through the function of labor repression in unequal enclaves in democracies, with a focus on the tea plantation economy in northeast India. In other ongoing research, she focuses on carceral institutions, the intersection of development and contention, and land and labor politics. To study these topics, Emily takes a mixed-methods approach, leveraging administrative data, open-source environmental and text data, archival materials, in-depth interviews, and participant observation. Regionally, Emily often focuses on India with broader interest in South Asia and the Americas.

At Stanford, Emily was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Prior to graduate school, Emily received her B.A. in Political Science and Environmental Science from the University of Michigan.