Rate My Professor Rutger Ceballos

Rutger Ceballos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington in 2024, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington in 2019, an M.A. in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History from Queen Mary, University of London in 2016, and a B.A. in Political Science, History, and International Studies from the University of Washington in 2014. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Ceballos worked as a union organizer and labor activist in the Pacific Northwest, gaining firsthand experience in labor movements that shapes his research agenda.

Ceballos specializes in American political development, history of political thought, African American politics, and labor politics. His scholarship explores the relationship between American political development, African American politics, and American political thought, focusing on contestations over labor and land regimes during the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. His current book project, Managing Emancipation: Land, Labor, and the Reconstruction of the American Racial Capitalist State—adapted from his doctoral dissertation—examines how complex interactions between federal officials and newly emancipated Black workers reshaped the American federal state and restructured racialized labor and land regimes. This work highlights state expansion during Emancipation, the influence of freed Black people on rebuilding the political economy, and pivotal moments in wartime Reconstruction alongside federal wartime policies. In addition, Ceballos has studied the history of labor organizing in the Pacific Northwest, left-wing political movements in the early 20th century, and the political thought of Frederick Douglass. His research interests also intersect with the politics and histories of labor movements, Marx and Marxism, and African American political thought.