Visiting Assistant Professor Anu Chakravarty
Ph.D., Cornell University (2008)

E-mail:    chakrava [AT] mailbox.sc.edu            Phone: 803-777-2207

Anu Chakravarty recently earned her doctoral degree from the department of
Government at Cornell University. Her dissertation is titled “Surrendering Consent: The
Politics of Transitional Justice in post-genocide Rwanda”. Her research shows how legal
processes with the goal of dispensing reconciliatory justice lead people to concede to
state elites the ‘right to rule’ despite believing that current state elites lack the moral
authority to govern. Thus citizens do not enforce limits on the state, enabling elites in
power to deprive them of political rights and still survive on citizen support. Based on 18
months of fieldwork in Rwanda, the primary data collected includes prison and
community-based surveys, a detailed ethnography of local state-society dynamics and
community-based genocide trials in their hearing, judgment and sentencing stages.
In the year 2007-8, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute at the
University of Notre Dame. Her primary area studies focus is on sub-Saharan Africa with
a secondary focus on South Asia. At present, she is working on a comparative study to
explore if the choice of various transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth
commissions versus trials in transition countries, has a causal effect on different
democratization outcomes. Her research interests also include genocide studies, human
rights, nationalism, social movements, and contentious politics broadly defined. She has
taught a variety of courses in political theory, comparative politics and international
relations. In Fall 2008, she is teaching a course titled “Genocide: A Comparative
Perspective” in the department of political science at the University of South Carolina.
Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation-funded Workshop on
Transnational Contention, the Mellon Foundation, the Sage and Bluestone Peace Studies
Fellowships and grants from the Mario Einaudi Center at Cornell University. She has
presented her work at invited talks as well as at conferences, including the American
Political Science Association and African Studies Association annual meetings. Her
publications include a co-authored chapter in a book edited by Raka Ray and Mary
Katzenstein and articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her dissertation committee comprised
Professors Sidney Tarrow (Chair), Nicolas van de Walle, Mary Katzenstein and Devra
Moehler.