The department is delighted to introduce and welcome our newest faculty members to the political science community!
Derefe Kimarley Chevannes (PhD, University of Connecticut) joins the department as Assistant Professor in Black Political Thought. His research explores Black liberation and Black radical thought in the modern world, situated at the intersection of Political Theory and Black Studies. He is currently completing his first book, Against American Ethnocracy: Race, Sovereignty & the Myth of Black Citizenship, and has published in numerous journals and edited volumes. He was previously an Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the University of Memphis.
David Ragazzoni (PhD, Columbia University) joins the Department as Assistant Professor in Political Theory from NYU School of Law where he was a postdoctoral research fellow. His articles have been published in Constellations, An International Journal of Democratic and Critical Theory, Journal of Political Ideologies, and Ethics and International Affairs. He is a co-author (and the co-editor with Sandrine Baume) of Hans Kelsen on Constitutional Democracy: Genesis, Theory, Legacies (Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law series, Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2025).
Daniel Rubenson (PhD, London School of Economics) joins the department as Professor. His research focusses on elections, political participation and social identity. He is Executive Director of Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) and co-Principal Investigator of the Canadian Election Study. His work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Political Psychology among others. Previously he was Professor in the Department of Politics at TMU and has held visiting positions at Sciences Po, the European University Institute and Facebook.
Chagai M. Weiss (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) joins U of T as an Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Charles and Andrea Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies, cross-appointed with the Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies. He previously spent two years as a Middle East Initiative predoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Chagai’s research focuses on the political effects and institutional remedies of conflict and polarization. His research has been published or is forthcoming in various outlets, and his current book project is under advance contract with Princeton University Press.