Volha Charnysh

Volha Charnysh is the Ford Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in comparative politics and historical political economy. Her research explores identity in state-building, long-term effects of violence, and migration dynamics in Europe and Eurasia.

• PhD in Government from Harvard University (2017)
• Editorial Board: Journal of Historical Political Economy (JHPE), Broadstreet Blog

Her 2024 book Uprooted (Cambridge University Press) redefines assumptions about post-WWII displacement by analyzing its state-building and economic impacts in Poland and West Germany. Publications span top journals like American Political Science Review and World Politics, focusing on ethnic politics, authoritarianism, and post-conflict reconstruction.

Recent articles highlight methodological innovation, blending archival research with quantitative analysis of historical events. Themes include forced migration’s institutional effects, intergenerational political value transmission, and violence’s socioeconomic legacies.

• Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Prize (2018)
• Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award (2021)

Charnysh’s work has been supported by fellowships at Princeton, Amsterdam, and Stanford’s Hoover Institution. She co-teaches courses on ethnic politics and historical political economy at MIT, with a forthcoming focus on the ethical and policy implications of mass migration.