Hilton Simmet is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy and a Research Associate with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School. His research centers on the relationship between political theory and public policy, with a particular focus on how research paradigms seeking to address inequality reflect underlying ideas of political order, namely the welfare state. In particular, his dissertation work asks how distinct social science methods—randomized controlled trials (RCTs), historical data collection and action-oriented research—emerged from unique political contexts in the US, France and India. Through this research he is trying to understand how the science of inequality is intimately tied up with political efforts to achieve social justice—or, put differently, how societies co-produce epistemic and normative orders to achieve important policy aims such as combatting poverty or reducing inequality.
Hilton holds an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.A. in Political Science from Yale University.
