Harris Welcomes Four New Faculty for 2023-2024

The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy welcomes four new tenure-track faculty members for the just begun academic year. Associate Professor Lesley Turner and Assistant Professors Martin Castillo Quintana, Erin M. Kelley, and Maggie Shi bring innovative research portfolios and extend Harris’ scholarly expertise in their respective fields of study.

“We are thrilled to have such distinguished scholars join us at Harris,” said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, interim dean and Sydney Stein professor. “They will enrich our community, inspire our students, and bring fresh evidence-driven scholarship to the academy and policy arena.”

These additions bring the school’s total tenured, tenure-track, and joint faculty roster to 57. They strengthen Harris’ deep and broad team of world-class researchers in fields such as education policy, health policy, political economy, and development economics.

More about the new faculty:

Lesley Turner
Associate Professor

Lesley J. Turner's research broadly considers the roles that government should play in providing, financing, and regulating education. She served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary and Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Education in 2022 and as an education fellow in the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in 2018-19. She is also a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and CESifo research affiliate. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and most recently was an Associate Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University.

Martin Castillo Quintana
Assistant Professor

Martin Castillo Quintana studies the relationship between violent conflict, policymaking, and politics, with a methodological emphasis on formal theory. His current research delves into how organized criminal groups fight each other and their interactions with government and state authorities. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from New York University.

Erin M. Kelley
Assistant Professor

Officially starts March 1.

Maggie Shi
Assistant Professor

Maggie Shi is a health economist who studies how policy decisions shape provider and patient behavior, and what the implications are for healthcare cost and quality. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research having served as a postdoctoral fellow there prior to joining Harris.