Peter Johannessen

Peter Johannessen

Assistant Professor of Public Policy; CTE Faculty Fellow


Education & Training
PhD, Politics and Social Policy, Princeton University
MA, Politics, Princeton University
BA, Political Science and History, University of Vermont

Peter Johannessen’s research explores how popular participation shapes the local policy-making process, including projects that focus on local electoral responsiveness and the design of participatory governance institutions in Brazil. These projects engage with broader debates about democratic representation and the consequences of decentralization reforms in the developing world. For his work, he received the 2018 Susan Clarke Young Scholars’ Award from APSA’s Urban and Local Politics Section. His research has been published in Comparative Political Studies.

Before joining Batten, Johannessen was a postdoctoral fellow with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to that, he was a Visiting Fellow with the Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame and a Quin Morton Teaching Fellow with the Princeton Writing Program.