Dr. Calla Hummel (they/them) studies why and how communities with little political power organize and negotiate with their governments. Dr. Hummel is the author of Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State (Oxford University Press 2021; 2023 Riker Prize for the Best Book in Political Economy), which examines when and why informal workers organize and the impacts that the world’s two billion informal workers have on local and national politics.

Dr. Hummel is a nonbinary researcher and their current research agenda examines the surprising expansion of trans and nonbinary rights around the world. Dr. Hummel uses statistical, ethnographic, survey, computational, experimental, and formal methods to address questions about comparative political economy, public health, and civil society. They conduct research with trans-led NGOs and street vendor unions in Miami, Florida, La Paz, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil. Their research has been published in Lancet Global Health, BMJ Global Health, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Health Affairs, Scientific Data, Perspectives on Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and Latin American Research Review, among others, and supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, and the American Political Science Association.