Emily Russell

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2023–2024 Academic Year

Legacies of Forced Labor

In the British Caribbean, indenture populated sugar plantations for the major part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, bringing millions of people from central India to the islands and constructing lineages of ethnically-diverse descent in the colonies. In this project, Russell will build on his existing work studying the impacts of indenture in Southeast Asia to examine the political economic logic of forced labor on the subsequent development of coercive political institutions in history, as well as conduct exploratory fieldwork in Guyana and Trinidad to understand how descendants of both forced labor systems are treated by the state today.

Emily Russell, Department of Political Science

Emily Russell is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science where she is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and NSF research fellow. Her work, which spans India and the Americas, examines how historical modes of extraction and development engender coercive and carceral political institutions. She is affiliated with the Poverty and Governance Lab and the lab for Inclusive Democracy and Development. Outside of research, she co-leads Stanford's Jail and Prison Education Program where she teaches political science coursework in Bay Area jails.

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