Faculty Co-Directors
Suresh Naidu is the Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
He has a B.Math in Pure Mathematics from the Unversity of Waterloo, a MA in economics from the University of Massachussetts-Amherst, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a Harvard Academy fellow from 2008-2010, and has been at Columbia since 2010. He works on political economy and historical labor markets. He has interests in the economic effects of democracy and non-democracy, monopsony in labor markets, the economics of American slavery, guest worker migration, and labor unions and labor organizing. In addition to being a faculty co-director for the Center for Political Economy, he is external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and a leading scholar and writer on corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions.
She is the author or co-author of nine books. Her most recent book, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality," examines how assets such as land, private debt, business organizations, or knowledge are transformed into capital through contract law, property rights, collateral law, and trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law. The Code of Capital was named one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and Business Insider.
Pistor publishes widely in legal and social science journals. In her essay “From Territorial to Monetary Sovereignty” in the Journal on Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2017), she argued that the rise of a global money system means a new definition of sovereignty: the control of money. She has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Comparative Law, Columbia Journal of European Law, European Business Organization Law Review, and Journal of Institutional Economics.
Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, and Deputy Director, Columbia World Projects. His 2013 Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in Political Science. Other books include Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy After Reconstruction (2018, co-authored with David Bateman and John Lapinski), and Liberal Beginnings: A Republic for the Moderns (2008, co-authored with Andreas Kalyvas). His most recent book is Time Counts: Quantitative Methods for Historical Social Science (2022, co-authored with Gregory Wawro).
Professor Katznelson, a fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, is a former president both of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science Research Council. He earned his B.A. at Columbia College and his Ph.D. in History at the University of Cambridge, where in 2017-18, he was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. He also has taught at the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research. From September 2019 through August 2021 he served as Columbia's Interim Provost.
Center Team
Melissa joined the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects in July 2024 as a Project Officer. Prior to joining the Center, Melissa worked in philanthropy and international development. Most recently Melissa served as a Program Manager at Philanthropy Together, a global initiative that connects and catalyzes the field of collective giving with the larger aim of fostering a more democratic and diverse philanthropic field. While at Philanthropy Together, she helped strategize and execute events and programs to build, connect, and strengthen collective giving groups such as giving circles and collaborative funds. Previously, Melissa interned with several international development firms, supporting business development teams in securing contracts for government-funded development projects abroad. Melissa holds a B.A. in Global Studies from Long Island University Global College, a four-year experientially based study abroad program. During her undergraduate degree, she completed a blend of coursework, internships, and research throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Kathryn joined the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects in April 2023 as a Project Officer. Prior to joining the Center, Kathryn worked for Survivor Corps, a grassroots organization that arose out of the COVID-19 pandemic to connect COVID survivors to medical, scientific, and legal resources and to advocate for long COVID recognition. Kathryn also worked as a COVID-19 Contact Tracer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the height of the pandemic, performing outreach to COVID cases and contacts to minimize COVID transmission and help those affected. Now, motivated by her background in pandemic response work, Kathryn is interested in supporting the Center for Political Economy as it reimagines and advances economic frameworks that protect the health and welfare of the public. Kathryn graduated from Vassar College in May 2020 with a degree in Science, Technology & Society.
David Caughlin is the Project Director of the Center for Political Economy (CPE), where he oversees all activities of the Center, reviews expenditures and reports to donors.
Previously, David worked at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) where he served as the Associate Director for the MPA in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) and the Center on Global Economy and Governance (CGEG). In both roles he collaborated with many of Columbia’s global centers, as well as with a variety of schools and offices at Columbia, as well as external partners in the US and internationally. Prior to his work at SIPA, he worked as Program Manager at Columbia’s Law School’s Public Interest Law Initiative, where he oversaw a fellowship program for human rights lawyers from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.
Before coming to Columbia, David worked as Special Projects Manager at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, where, among other duties, he oversaw the development of a publication on Russian constitutional law in Russian. David holds two master’s degrees – in Human Rights from Central European University, and an MPA at SIPA where he concentrated in International Economic Policy and Management – and is earning a third master’s at Teachers College in Higher and Postsecondary Education. David was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian, Russian and some Hungarian. He is an avid jogger and is currently training for his third NYC marathon.
Faculty Co-Directors
Ira Katznelson
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History; Deputy Director, Columbia World Projects
Suresh Naidu
Professor of International and Public Affairs and Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics
Katharina Pistor
Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law; Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation
Center Team
Madeline Neighly
Project Director
Anna Marchese
Senior Project Officer
Kathryn Burke
Project Officer
Center Team
Melissa joined the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects in July 2024 as a Project Officer. Prior to joining the Center, Melissa worked in philanthropy and international development. Most recently Melissa served as a Program Manager at Philanthropy Together, a global initiative that connects and catalyzes the field of collective giving with the larger aim of fostering a more democratic and diverse philanthropic field. While at Philanthropy Together, she helped strategize and execute events and programs to build, connect, and strengthen collective giving groups such as giving circles and collaborative funds. Previously, Melissa interned with several international development firms, supporting business development teams in securing contracts for government-funded development projects abroad. Melissa holds a B.A. in Global Studies from Long Island University Global College, a four-year experientially based study abroad program. During her undergraduate degree, she completed a blend of coursework, internships, and research throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Kathryn joined the Center for Political Economy at Columbia World Projects in April 2023 as a Project Officer. Prior to joining the Center, Kathryn worked for Survivor Corps, a grassroots organization that arose out of the COVID-19 pandemic to connect COVID survivors to medical, scientific, and legal resources and to advocate for long COVID recognition. Kathryn also worked as a COVID-19 Contact Tracer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the height of the pandemic, performing outreach to COVID cases and contacts to minimize COVID transmission and help those affected. Now, motivated by her background in pandemic response work, Kathryn is interested in supporting the Center for Political Economy as it reimagines and advances economic frameworks that protect the health and welfare of the public. Kathryn graduated from Vassar College in May 2020 with a degree in Science, Technology & Society.
David Caughlin is the Project Director of the Center for Political Economy (CPE), where he oversees all activities of the Center, reviews expenditures and reports to donors.
Previously, David worked at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) where he served as the Associate Director for the MPA in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) and the Center on Global Economy and Governance (CGEG). In both roles he collaborated with many of Columbia’s global centers, as well as with a variety of schools and offices at Columbia, as well as external partners in the US and internationally. Prior to his work at SIPA, he worked as Program Manager at Columbia’s Law School’s Public Interest Law Initiative, where he oversaw a fellowship program for human rights lawyers from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.
Before coming to Columbia, David worked as Special Projects Manager at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, where, among other duties, he oversaw the development of a publication on Russian constitutional law in Russian. David holds two master’s degrees – in Human Rights from Central European University, and an MPA at SIPA where he concentrated in International Economic Policy and Management – and is earning a third master’s at Teachers College in Higher and Postsecondary Education. David was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian, Russian and some Hungarian. He is an avid jogger and is currently training for his third NYC marathon.