Raven E. Brown is a political economist, policy scientist, and educator. Brown has a Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy from the School of Public Engagement at The New School. She also holds an MPH in Global Public Health from New York University, an MA in International Affairs from The New School, and a BA in the Social Sciences and Ceramics from Bennington College. Brown was a recipient of the Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individual Study as a member of the 2022-2024 cohort, and subsequently was a Visiting Scholar at NYU Gallatin’s Urban Democracy Lab.
Her dissertation, “Neoliberalism, the Right to Housing, and the Evolution of the Welfare State in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is a compilation of three essays that investigate why poverty and inequality persist despite public sector policies geared towards redistribution. Brown provides an in-depth review of South Africa’s transition to democracy, housing policies, and institutional reform strategies. She unpacks the effects of nearly 50 years of neoliberal policies on the global political economy and on conceptions of the welfare state. Ultimately, Brown posits that the instability of the post-Soviet international order is a direct result of undermining the capacity of the state and shredding the social contract.
Brown has 18 years of field experience in development and global health. She has worked in Argentina, Guatemala, Israel, Mexico, South Africa, Mozambique, Rwanda, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, the United States, and Zambia, and conducted programmatic interventions and research, and written policy briefs related to Angola, Banglidesh, Belize, Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Turkey, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Raven E. Brown’s current research interests include:
Inequality, Neoliberalism and the Welfare State, The Social Contract, Democracy
Her teaching interests include:
Urban Studies, Political Science, African Politics, American Politics
Currently, she is working on several research projects, including Climate Change as an Example of Colonial Failure, The Politics of Economic Extraction in Latin America and the Caribbean, a curriculum on Race as a Social Construction: A Case Study from Cape Town, and a policy brief on Climate Change and Policy Diffusion from the Global South to the Global North.
For weekly think pieces, please visit my Substack, Collectively. For more information about my professional experience, please visit my LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/raven-e-brown-92b74a11/.
Raven E Brown 