Graduate Student
Nicholas W. Schiavo is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at Boston University, specializing in political theory. His research interests include political violence, state power, law and coercion, race and policing, Marxist thought, and critical theory. Nicholas completed a Master of Public Policy at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where he received the Legacy Fund Research Grant to support independent theoretical and policy research. He earned his B.A. in Political Science, with a minor in Philosophy of Law, from the University of Massachusetts Boston, graduating summa cum laude, and previously earned an A.A. in Political Science from Massachusetts Bay Community College.
His current work examines the relationship between violence, legitimacy, and political rupture, with particular attention to how liberal democracies justify state violence while often disavowing the violence of their own founding and maintenance. He is also interested in how law, policing, and racialized suspicion shape political subjectivity and reproduce social order. More broadly, his research asks how political theory can better account for moments when existing institutions are not merely reformed, but contested, broken, or reimagined.