Rate My Professor Alisha Holland

Alisha C. Holland is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Government Department at Harvard University and serves as Director of Graduate Studies. She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on Latin America, urban politics, and social policy. Her research examines topics including law enforcement, informal welfare, infrastructure investment, migration, crime control, subnational governance, and corruption. Holland earned an A.B. from Princeton University in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2014. Prior to her current role, she was an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Holland is the author of the book Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, which analyzes the politics of enforcement against property law violations by the poor, such as squatting, street vending, and electricity theft. She is currently working on a book project about the politics of large infrastructure projects in Latin America. In 2023, she received the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her additional research interests include bureaucracy, democracy, institutions, the judiciary and public law, parties, campaigns and elections, political economy and development, public opinion, public policy, the welfare state, state and local politics, and voter behavior. She employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys, in her work focused on Latin America.