Marco Aviña

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University, where I am also a GSAS Presidential Scholar, a James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Ph.D. Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration, and a Weatherhead Center Canada Research Fellow. I am affiliated with the Center for American Political Studies and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

I am currently on the academic job market. You can read my job market paper here.

I study how class shapes the politics of recognition and redistribution in contemporary democracies, with a focus on American public opinion, elections, and political behavior.  My dissertation centers on the class foundations of identity politics in the U.S. and argues that during the “Great Awokening,” affluent white liberals drove support for social justice more in principle than in policy. It develops a theory of status signaling to explain why symbolic engagement often outpaces material commitments among this key Democratic constituency and why progressive coalitions often prioritize recognition over redistribution. 

More broadly, my work seeks to understand why individuals hold the views they do on issues of distributional conflict, how they act upon those preferences, and how this impacts disadvantaged groups. Across projects, I ask questions such as how to foster inclusion and support for policy change, whether place shapes people’s politics, and when identity fails to translate into group affinity or solidarity. Methodologically, I am a pluralist and meta-science enthusiast concerned with matters of credibility, replicability, and generalizability in political science research. My work is published in Science Advances, the Journal of Politics, and Public Opinion Quarterly, among other outlets. Visit my research page to learn more about my publications, working papers, and works in progress.

I am a Mexican-born French Canadian studying American politics. I am also a 1.5-generation immigrant and first-generation college student. Before coming to Harvard, I was introduced to academic research at l'Université de Montréal, where I was a member of the Research Chair in Electoral Studies and the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.

In my spare time, I'm often on a very long walk around Boston or Montréal—committed flâneur that I am—with my better half Andreea and our chipin Maria. I enjoy cooking and baking, cocktails, architecture, classical music, driving, science fiction, '60s Judy Garland, strong female leads, and making lists.