Harris Mylonas

Mylonas Harris

Harris Mylonas

Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs

Full-time


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Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers. He interested in the processes of nation- and state-building, diaspora policies, and political development. His work contributes to our understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. He is particularly interested in the role of decision makers’ perceptions about foreign involvement in their domestic affairs and the impact these perceptions have on the planning and implementation of state policies. 
 
His first book The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities, won the 2014 European Studies Book Award by the Council for European Studies which honors the best first book on any subject in European Studies published within a two-year period and the Peter Katzenstein Book Prize for the best first book on International Relations, Comparative Politics or Political Economy in 2013. The book was also awarded an honorable mention by the Rothschild Prize in Nationalities and Ethnic Studies Committee of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in 2014. The Politics of Nation-Building identifies the conditions in which the ruling political elites of a state target unassimilated ethnic groups with assimilationist policies instead of granting them minority rights or excluding them from the state. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism. He is currently working on his second book project--tentatively entitled Diaspora Management Logics--analyzing why some states develop policies to cultivate links with and/or to attract back certain diasporic communities while others do not. He has co-edited two volumes, Enemies Within: Fifth Column Politics in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2022; w/ Scott Radnitz) and The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics (Routledge, 2022; w/ Alexandra Délano Alonso). His book Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities, co-authored with Maya Tudor, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press as part of the Elements Series in Political Development.
 
 
His involvement and writings on the Greek crisis led to him being invited to become one of the contributors for the Political Data Yearbook published by the European Journal of Political Research. Mylonas recently co-produced and directed a political documentary entitled, Searching for Andreas: Political Leadership in Times of Crisis.  The film premiered at the 20th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, won two awards at the International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra, and was also screened at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC and the 2021 World Congress of Political Science of the International Political Science Association.
 
Mylonas received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, his MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and completed his undergraduate degree at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Athens, Greece. In 2008-09 and 2011-12 academic years he was an Academy Scholar in residence at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He has served as Associate Dean for Research at the Elliott School of International Affairs (2017-18). 

 


Nationalism, Nation- and State-Building, Social Order, Diaspora Policies, European Politics.

PSC 2332 - European Integration

PSC 2338 - Nationalism

PSC 6362 - Nation Building in the Balkans

PSC 8104 - Qualitative Research Methods

PSC 8388 - Nationalism and Nation-Building

IAFF/PSC 6388 - Nationalism in Europe

 

Books:
Harris Mylonas. 2013. The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press).

Harris Mylonas. Diaspora Management Logics, Unpublished book manuscript.

Edited Journal Issue: 
Alexandra Délano Alonso and Harris Mylonas (eds.). 2019. The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics: Unpacking the State and Disaggregating the Diaspora. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 45, Issue 4.
 
Edited Volumes:

Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz. Forthcoming. Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns, Oxford University Press.

Alexandra Délano Alonso and Harris Mylonas. 2022. The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics, Routledge. 

 

Articles:
Book Chapters:

Book Reviews:

  • 2020. Review of Alexandra Délano Alonso’s From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights Beyond Borders, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2018. In Migration Studies.
  • 2020. Review of Alan Gamlen's Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants, and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions, Oxford University Press, 2019. In EUI's Global Citizenship Observatory series. 2018. Review of Zeynep Bulutgil’s The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2016. in Nationalities Papers, Volume 46, Issue 5, pages 916-919.

 

Ph.D., Yale University, 2008