Fields of Interest
Biography
Rutger Ceballos is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. Rutger’s primary research interests lie at the intersection of American political development, political theory, and the politics of racial capitalism. His dissertation, Managing Emancipation: Land, Labor, and the Reconstruction of the American Racial Capitalist State examines the complex interactions between the American state and Black freedom movements in the 19th century. By focusing on key moments in wartime Reconstruction and retracing the development of federal wartime policies, the dissertation highlights the understudied period of (1) state expansion during the contested process of Emancipation; and (2) how freed Black people influenced the rebuilding of a new political economy. In addition to his work on Emancipation, Rutger's broader research and teaching interests include the politics and histories of labor movements, Marx and Marxism, and African-American political thought.
Rutger received an M.A. in the History of Political Thought from Queen Mary, University of London, and his B.A. in Political Science, International Studies, and History from the University of Washington. Before beginning his Ph.D., Rutger worked as a union organizer and labor activist in the Pacific Northwest.