Fotini Christia is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at Harvard University completing a dissertation on civil war alliance formation in Afghanistan and Bosnia. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnic conflict and civil wars. She is also presently part of an academic team working on a World Bank-sponsored randomized evaluation of local governing councils in rural Afghanistan. Fotini has published work on the role of local elites in civils wars in Comparative Politics and has written opinion pieces on the Middle East and Central Asia for the New York Times, the Washington Poston, the Boston Globe, and Radio Free Europe. She has conducted academic field work in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iran, and has worked in field missions for the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Uzbekistan, and Kosovo. She holds a BA in Economics and Operations Research from Columbia College and an MA in International Affairs from SIPA.