Kiara A. Hernández

Welcome!

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Government at Harvard University and a James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Ph.D. Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration at the Harvard Kennedy School.

I will join the Center for Political Economy (Work and Labor Idea Lab) at Columbia University as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Fall 2026.

My research examines how social divisions shape political responses to inequality — whether, why, and how people cooperate, mobilize, or fracture. Much of my work focuses on racial and ethnic diversity, labor/class conflict, and status threat as forces that pull in each direction.

I graduated with a B.A. in International Relations and German from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, I spent two years as a predoctoral research specialist in the Emerging Scholars in Political Science program at Princeton University.

I can be reached at khernandez@g.harvard.edu.