
Class of 1943 Career
Development Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
MIT
nardoz@mit.edu
CV
I am a political theorist with an interest in ethnographic methods.
My research examines the state as it is experienced by those who interact with it and those who act in its name. My first book, When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency (Harvard University Press, 2017), probes the everyday moral life of street-level bureaucrats. My second book project, provisionally titled Institutional Atmospherics: The Interior Architecture of the Welfare State (under contract with Harvard University Press), reconstructs and interrogates the evolution of the interior architecture of welfare offices. Along with Duncan Bell, I have co-edited a volume of essays on Political Theory and Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Some of my recent papers include Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration, The Politics of Sight (with Jasmine English), What’s in a Balcony?, and What Is Public Space For?.
My work has appeared in American Ethnologist, the American Political Science Review, the Annual Review of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, and Grey Room. I have also contributed essays to The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and The New York Times.
Prior to joining MIT, I was a junior research fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard and hold a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
In 2021-22, I was a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) in Berlin. Alongside my position at MIT, I am a visiting professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Aalborg.
I convene the MIT Workshop in Social and Political Theory.
My research examines the state as it is experienced by those who interact with it and those who act in its name. My first book, When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency (Harvard University Press, 2017), probes the everyday moral life of street-level bureaucrats. My second book project, provisionally titled Institutional Atmospherics: The Interior Architecture of the Welfare State (under contract with Harvard University Press), reconstructs and interrogates the evolution of the interior architecture of welfare offices. Along with Duncan Bell, I have co-edited a volume of essays on Political Theory and Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Some of my recent papers include Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration, The Politics of Sight (with Jasmine English), What’s in a Balcony?, and What Is Public Space For?.
My work has appeared in American Ethnologist, the American Political Science Review, the Annual Review of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, and Grey Room. I have also contributed essays to The Atlantic, the Boston Review, and The New York Times.
Prior to joining MIT, I was a junior research fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard and hold a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
In 2021-22, I was a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) in Berlin. Alongside my position at MIT, I am a visiting professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Aalborg.
I convene the MIT Workshop in Social and Political Theory.