Biography
Sinéad Carolan is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory. She is interested in the intellectual history of socialism and capitalism, as well as in theories of disorder, corruption, and decay in modern political thought.
Her dissertation, titled “Spontaneous (Dis)order: Theories of Reform and Regime Change in Eastern Europe,” examines the changing conceptions of human behavior that inspired Hungarian, Polish, and Yugoslav intellectuals to abandon socialism and embrace capitalism between 1956 and 1989. As sociologists, economists, political theorists, and philosophers lost confidence in spontaneous order, or the alignment between private and public interests, capitalism and its capacity to divide public power grew more appealing.
Ms. Carolan’s work has been funded by a FLAS Fellowship, a GSAS International Travel Fellowship, and numerous grants from the Harriman Institute. She is an incoming instructor for Columbia’s Core Curriculum.
She holds a B.S.F.S. in International Politics from Georgetown University and is proficient in Hungarian, Polish, and BCS.
