About the Speaker:
Patrick Heller's primary area of research is the comparative study of democratic deepening. He is the author of The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Cornell University Press, 1999) and a co-author of Social Democracy in the Periphery (Cambridge, 2007). He has written on a range of topics including democratic consolidation, the politics of decentralization, local democracy, urban transformation and social movements. Dr. Heller is currently finishing a four year research project funded by NSF on the post-apartheid city. The project uses both GIS data and qualitative fieldwork to examine the impact of planned transformation on the racial and economic reconfiguration of South Africa’s three largest cities. He is also finishing a book on democratization and urban governance in Brazil with Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Marcelo Kunrath Silva (Stanford University Press) and working on a book that explores the relationship between development, democracy and civil society through a comparative analysis of India, Brazil and South Africa. Dr. Heller is the Director of the Watson Institute’s Graduate Program in Development (GPD).