Risa J. Toha

Hello! I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University. 

I'm broadly interested in comparative ethnic politics, political violence, and elections, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia. My book, Rioting for Representation: Local Ethnic Mobilization in Democratizing Countries, examines the micro-dynamics of ethnic riots in Indonesia during its transition to democracy and argues that local political actors resort to violence to protest against exclusion in local politics. This book was published by Cambridge University Press. 

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and my AB from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.  Before joining Wake Forest University, I was an Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, an Indonesia Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wheaton College, and a Visiting Scholar at the Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University.    My research has been supported by grants from the Singapore Social Science Research Council, Singapore's Ministry of Education, Yale-NUS College, National University of Singapore, the Mustard Seed Foundation, Pacific Rim Research Organization, and the U.S. Department of Education, among others. 

I am currently a member of the executive council of the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) and a member of the International Studies Association Committee on the Status of Engagement with the Global South.   Previously, I was  Chair of the American Political Science Association's Southeast Asia Politics Related Group, and an inaugural co-convenor of Women in Southeast Asian Social Sciences (WiSEASS).