Christian Hosam

My name is Christian Hosam and I am a fifth year PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California Berkeley and a Graduate Student Researcher with the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab. My work has been published in Politics, Groups, and Identites and Sociological Forum. I am also the co-author of Latino Politics, 3rd ed., with Professor Lisa Garcia Bedolla. I have also received generous research funding support from the Social Science Research Council, the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Law and Society, and the APSA Diversity Fellowship Program.

In addition to my academic work, I have also written for public outlets such as Dissent Magazine and The Washington Post.

All of my research projects are driven by thinking about how structural aspects of the American political economy play out in the day-to-day lives of Black people and other communities of color. My dissertation book project looks at how the shifting nature of Congress as an institution in the years following the Civil Rights Movement led to increased descriptive representation on one hand but increasing constraints on the types of transformational policies that can materially change Black communities on the other, a tension I theorize as representational triage. I have other work on the American maternal mortality crisis and how the structure of American healthcare uniquely imperils the life course of Black women.