Christopher Carter is the John L. Nau III Assistant Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. In Fall 2025, Chris is a Mid-Career Fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research. His research explores the historical evolution of Indigenous-state relations in Latin America, spanning from independence to the present.

Chris’s first book, The Long Shadow of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous Autonomy Demands (Princeton University Press), examines how experiences of land and labor loss shaped Indigenous autonomy movements. This project received the 2020 APSA Best Fieldwork Award and the 2021 Juan Linz Prize. His work employs a multi-method approach, combining experiments, natural experiments, interviews, and archival research. He has published his work in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Perspectives on Politics, among others.

At Tulane, Chris is developing his second book, which investigates how foreign occupation has influenced the formation of national identity in Latin America and beyond. He is also advancing several projects on Indigenous identity and state-building in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia.