Patrick Heller is the Lyn Crost Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology and International Studies. He has a joint appointment in Sociology and at the Watson institute where he co-founded the Graduate Program in Development. His main area of research is the comparative study of social inequality and democratic deepening. He is the author of The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Cornell 1999) and co-author of Social Democracy and the Global Periphery (Cambridge 2006), Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil (Stanford 2011) and most recently, Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies. He has published articles on urbanization, comparative democracy, social movements, development policy, civil society and state transformation.