Calla Hummel (xy/xyr) is an Associate Professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Political Science. Dr. Hummel studies why and how marginalized people organize and negotiate with their governments. Dr. Hummel is the author of Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State (Oxford University Press 2021), which examines when and why informal workers organize and the impacts that the world’s two billion informal workers have on local and national politics. Why Informal Workers Organize won the 2023 Riker Prize for the Best Book in Political Economy. Dr. Hummel is a nonbinary researcher and xyr current research agenda examines the surprising expansion of trans and nonbinary rights around the world. 

Dr. Hummel uses statistical, ethnographic, survey, computational, experimental, and formal methods to address questions about comparative political economy, public health, and civil society. Xy conducts research with trans-led NGOs and street vendor unions in Miami, Florida, La Paz, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil. Xyr research has been published in Lancet Global Health, BMJ Global Health, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Health Affairs, Scientific Data, Perspectives on Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and Latin American Research Review, among others, and supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the American Political Science Association, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington, and the University of Miami. Xy received xyr PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

Follow Dr. Hummel on Twitter or contact xyr at chummel at miami dot edu.