Ph.D. Harvard University, Political Science (2005)
M.A. Harvard University, Political Science (2001)
M.A. University of California at Berkeley, Asian Studies (1998)
B.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Asian Studies and Japanese (1996)

Daniel P. Aldrich is an associate professor of political science at Purdue University who is on leave as a Fulbright research fellow at the University of Tokyo’s Economics Department for the academic year 2012-2013 and who was an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow at USAID during the 2011-2012 academic year. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Tokyo’s Law Faculty in Japan, an Advanced Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Program on US-Japan Relations, a Visiting Researcher at Centre Américain, Sciences Po in Paris, France and a Visiting Professor at the Tata Institute for Disaster Management in Mumbai, India. He is a board member of the journals Asian Politics and Policy and Risk Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy and a Mansfield U.S. Japan Network for the Future Alumnus. He is the section organizer for the American Political Science Association’s Disasters and Crises Related Group.

His research interests include post-disaster recovery, the siting of controversial facilities, the interaction between civil society and the state, and the socialization of women and men through experience. His work has been discussed in New York Times, CNN , the State Department’s Media Hub, the National Bureau of Asian Research, WBEZ’s WorldView, National Public Radio, The New Republic, MSNBC’s Last Word, National Public Radio, NPR Radio programs, the New York Times (and again in the NYT) , The Oriental Economist, Bloomberg News, Voice of America, The Kudlow Report, Security Management, Reuters, Nikkei Business, ESPN, the Monkey Cage, WSBT News Radio, Marginal Revolution, German newspapers, Italian blogs, French NGO blogs, Slate, The Daily Beast, Reflexiones Finales, Her Campus, Sara Schonhardt’s blog, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and numerous regional media outlets. On May 2011 the Purdue Exponent named him among the “Top 5 Professors who have influenced international and national events.” In July 2012 his New York Times Op-Ed on disaster recovery was named as one of the five best columns in the Atlantic Wire.

Daniel’s first book, Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West, was published by Cornell University Press in 2008 and was republished (as a 2nd edition paperback) in May 2010 and was translated into Japanese by Sekaishisosha Publishers. The book has been reviewed in more than 18 journals and on several blogs, including Nuclear Street, Dispirited Academic and The Journal Governance. It has been mentioned by French Nonfiction and Greenfieldoptimist and Japan Focus as well.

He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles along with more than 60 book chapters, articles, book reviews, and op-eds for general audiences in five main areas: disaster recovery, controversial facility siting, countering violent extremism, fieldwork practices, and sex differences in political behavior.

His second book Building Resilience: Social Capital in Disaster Recovery was published in the summer of 2012 by the University of Chicago Press . Additional publications on disaster recovery include “Strong Civil Society as a Double-Edged Sword:Siting Trailers in Post-Katrina New Orleans” with Kevin Crook in Political Research Quarterly , “Social, Not Physical, Infrastructure: The Critical Role of Civil Society after the 1923 Tokyo Earthquake” in the Journal Disasters (this paper won the best paper award from the Public Policy Section), “Fixing Recovery: Social Capital in Post-Crisis Resilience” in The Journal of Homeland Security, “Separate but Unequal: Post Tsunami Aid Distribution in Southern India” in Social Science Quarterly, “The Power of People: Social Capital’s Role in Recovery from the 1995 Kobe Earthquake” in Natural Hazards, “The Externalities of Strong Social Capital: Post-Tsunami Recovery in Southeast India” in Journal of Civil Society, and a review of several books on disaster in Perspectives on Politics.

On sex differences he has published “Mars and Venus at Twilight: A Critical Investigation of Moralism, Age Affects, and Sex Differences,” with Rieko Kage in Political Psychology, and “Japanese Liberal Democratic Party Support, the Gender Gap, and Age: A New Approach” (also with Rieko Kage) in the British Journal of Political Science.

His peer-reviewed articles on controversial facilities (such as nuclear power plants and airports) include “Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society and Nuclear Power in Japan” (with Martin Dusinberre) in Journal of Asian Studies, “Location, Location, Location: Selecting Sites for Controversial Facilities, ” in Singapore Economic Review, “Controversial Facility Siting: State Policy Instruments and Flexibility” in the Journal of Comparative Politics, “Siting Schemes: Central Governments, State Learning, and Local Public Bads,” in Social Science Japan, and a book chapter entitled “The Limits of Flexible and Adaptive Institutions: The Japanese Government’s Role in Nuclear Power Plant Siting over the Post War Period,” in Managing Conflict in Facility Siting edited by S. Hayden Lesbirel and Daigee Shaw. He has also published an Op-Ed piece on the “Nuclear Renaissance” in the Asahi Shinbun, an Op-Ed on the silver lining to the 2011 Tohoku disaster in the Asahi Shinbun, and an Op-Ed on Japan’s nuclear crisis in Korean Times (with Mi-kyoung Kim).

Aldrich published an article entitled “The 800 Pound Gaijin in the Room” in PS: Political Science and Politics on the topic of fieldwork.