Introduction to Political Sociology

Danilo Mandić is Associate Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology. A political sociologist and comparative historical analyst, he specializes in war, refugees, nationalism, separatism, ethnic relations, social movements, organized crime, post-colonial states, and post-conflict societies. He has taught at Harvard for fourteen years, earning eight Bok Center Awards for Excellence in Teaching. He holds an AB from Princeton University and a PhD from Harvard University. He is faculty associate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and center associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. His first book, Gangsters and Other Statesmen: Mafias, Separatists and Torn States in a Globalized World received the Mirra Komarovsky Best Book Award (2022) from the Eastern Sociological Society, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section (2022). His second book, The Syrian Refugee Crisis: How Democracies and Autocracies Perpetrated Mass Displacement (2023), presents rare refugee data collected by an international research team he led into fieldwork in five countries in the Middle East and Europe. His forthcoming book is Bad Refugees (Oxford University Press). Mandić was voted favorite professor by the Harvard Class of 2025 in the annual yearbook poll.