I’m a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia Department of Politics, where I study urban and environmental politics. My primary research interests include the political economy of development, urban informality, public service provision, housing policy, the politics of information, and citizen-state relations. My dissertation and book project (in progress) explore the distributive politics of urban climate adaptation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. My research employs a multi-method approach, pairing surveys, geospatial analysis, and lab-in-the-field experiments with interviews, participant observation, and extensive fieldwork.
I am currently an Environmental Futures Fellow of the UVA Environmental Institute and a Bankard Fund for Political Economy Pre-Doctoral Fellow. In 2025, I was a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Brazil, where I conducted fieldwork as a visiting scholar of the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and as an invited researcher at the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA). My work has been funded by the US Department of Education, the Vanderbilt University Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX), the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Karsh Institute of Democracy, the UVA Center for Global Innovation and Inquiry (CGII), and others.
Before coming to UVA, I graduated with a B.A. in Public & Urban Affairs (concentration in Global Development) and a B.A. in International Relations from Virginia Tech, where I was named Outstanding Senior for both the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences and the School of Public & International Affairs. I have also previously worked in government intelligence research at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
I am on the 2026-2027 academic job market. You can find my CV here and my job market paper here. You can contact me at emgregory@virginia.edu.