Gabriel Nahmias

Graduate Research Fellow

Gabriel Nahmias is a PhD candidate in the department of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gabriel is a comparativist but occasionally confused for an Americanist, as he studies both South Africa and the United States. Topically, his research focuses on political engagement and how we get more of it – especially among the politically marginalized. His dissertation asks: “why do some (and not others) recruit people into politics?” Gabriel has recently written a white paper for the Work of the Future Taskforce on innovations in the American labor movement, identifying new seeds of collective action. He has also written an article on the long-term effects of campaign mobilization on political engagement.

Before coming to MIT, Gabriel spent two years working for a social movement organization in South Africa targeting issues of education inequality. He has a BA/MA in political science, as well as a BA in African studies, from Emory University. Gabriel is a winner of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and is a Kenan Sahin Presidential Fellow. With GOV/LAB, Gabriel has helped coordinate a field experiment on government transparency in Kenya and interviews with activists in South Africa.