Charlotte Ciavarella is a PhD student in History and EALC, focusing on the social and environmental history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan. Her dissertation project looks at the development of capitalism in Japan from the perspective of nomadic fishing groups. It considers how changes to the underlying mode of production transformed the labor, sustenance activities, and lifeways of these groups. More broadly, her interests include political economy, political ecology, gender and community structures, nomadic groups, and the history of agrarian and rural lifeways.

At Harvard she continues the research started during her time as an MA student at the University of British Columbia. She completed her BA degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016.