Chris Blattman was a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago, in the Harris School of Public Policy. Blattman holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and an MPA/ID from Harvard’s Kennedy School. His research focuses on poverty alleviation, political participation, the causes and consequences of violence and war, with a particular focus on East and West Africa. He uses surveys, impact evaluations, and behavioral experiments to study the dynamics of poverty and participation, and to study what development programs work and why. A number of studies are presently underway in Uganda and Liberia, studying new strategies for poverty alleviation and the impacts of poverty alleviation on violence, unrest, and other social and political behavior.
His development research site and blog is http://chrisblattman.com. He has also published articles in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Literature, International Organization, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.
In addition to being a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, Blattman is a Research Affiliate with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and a member of the International Growth Center (IGC). He has acted as a consultant and adviser to the World Bank, UNICEF, the UN Peacebuilding Fund, Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister, and Liberia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
