HARRIS MYLONAS  (Ph.D. Yale University, 2008)

I am a political scientist interested in the processes of nation- and state-building, immigrant and refugee incorporation policies, the politicization of cultural differences, and political development.

I joined the George Washington University faculty in fall 2009 as an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. I teach courses on Nationalism, European Integration, Nation-Building in the Balkans, and Qualitative Research Methods. For 2008-2009 and 2011-2012 academic years, I was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

My forthcoming book,The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (Cambridge University Press), identifies the conditions in which the ruling political elites of a state target non-core groups with assimilationist policies instead of granting them minority rights or excluding them from the state. The theory is tested against a variety of alternative explanations on multiple levels of analysis: a dataset of nation-building policies towards all politically relevant non-core groups in the Balkans after WWI, archival evidence on case studies focusing on the treatment of a few non-core groups over time, and a microlevel subnational study of a religiously, culturally, and linguistically heterogeneous province.

I am currently working on a second book project--tentatively entitled The Politics of Repatriation-- which focuses on state policies developed either to attract and/or to incorporate people returning to their country of origin, allegiance, or citizenship.

My recent publications include an article on third-party nation-building in occupied territories in Ethnopolitics (with Keith Darden), an article on Greece in the European Journal of Political Research, a chapter on nation-building in the Western Macedonia in the edited volume Rethinking Violence: State and Non-State Actors in Conflict (BCSIA International Security Series, MIT Press),  an article on electoral competition in Sub-Saharan Africa elections in Comparative Political Studies (with Nasos Roussias), and a chapter on Greek repatriation policies in Immigrants and Minorities: Discourse and Policies (Vivliorama/KEMO, with Elpida Vogli). Opinion pieces of mine on international affairs have appeared in Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, CNN.com, the Guardian, and Newsweek Japan among others.