Christopher R. Berry

Christopher R. Berry is the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the College. He is the academic director of the Center for Municipal Finance. His research interests include American politics, metropolitan governance, municipal finance, and intergovernmental fiscal relations. Berry is the author of Imperfect Union: Representation and Taxation in Multilevel Governments, winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association, and many other scholarly publications. He also reaches a broader audience by sharing his research in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the Chicago Tribune, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and many other outlets.

Prior to joining Harris, Berry was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Government's Program on Education Policy and Governance. He received his BA from Vassar College, his Master of Regional Planning (MRP) from Cornell University, and PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Berry is also active in community development and was formerly a director in the MetroEdge division of ShoreBank, which was America's oldest and largest community development financial institution.