Faculty

Scott B. Martin (Ph.D., Columbia University) has taught regularly in the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs program (now part of the New School for Social Research) since 2005 as well as in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University since 1998.  He also is Lecturer at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. Previously, Prof. Martin has also been a Lecturer of Political Science and Latin American Studies at Princeton University and a full-time Visiting Lecturer at Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University (2001), where he also served for two years as Assistant Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies.  He regularly worked as freelance research contributor to Latin American reports of the Economist Intelligence Unit for over a decade.  For 2022-2023, he was a Faculty Fellow at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School, and in 2023-24 he was recipient of a Faculty Research Fund grant, both for his fieldwork in Brazil and Mexico on employment relations at Amazon e-commerce warehouses.  His areas of research and teaching specialization are comparative and transnational labor politics, AI governance and regulation with a particular focus on work and employment, comparative social policy, corporate social responsibility in transnational corporations, politics/policy of socio-economic development, and Latin American political economy.  He is a member of the Task Force on Ethics, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work based at the Center for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute, Columbia University (Fall 2024-present).

Current research is focused on labor conflict and regulation at the Amazon company in its e-commerce distribution network in Latin America as well as regulation and governance of AI and tech in the region more generally, in particularly in the context of recent algorithmic transparency laws for warehouse work in five U.S. states. His forthcoming co-edited volume, to which he contributed five chapters, is Unpacking Global Amazon:  Work, Labor and Community in E-Commerce Warehousing and Logistics (Edward Elgar, 2026). He is co-author of Labor Contestation at Walmart Brazil:  Limits of Global Diffusion in Latin America (Palgrave, 2021), exploring the nationally contingent patterns of conflict and cooperation between unions and regulators on one hand the U.S. supermarket giant, on the other (with João Paulo Veiga and Katiuscia Galhera).   He co-edited and contributed to El Estado de Bienestar ante la Globalización:  El Caso de Norteamérica (El Colegio de México, 2012, with Ilán Bizberg) which explored divergent/convergent patterns of evolution in social policy and labor regulation across Mexico, Canada and the United States; Competitiveness and Development:  Local Actors and Institutions (São Paulo, SENAC, 2001) examining subnational economic governance across Latin America; and The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America:  Rethinking Participation and Representation (Oxford, 1997) which brought together research and new theoretical insights on participation and representation of popular-sector groups within a democratizing, market-reforming fin-de-siecle Latin America. His research and reviews have appeared in book chapters as well as journals such as Global Labour Journal, Perspectives on Politics, Labour Studies Journal, and Politica e Trabalho.

Ph.D., Graduate School of Arts of Sciences, Dept. of Political Science, Columbia University in the City of New York, 2001    

Master of Interational Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, 1988

B.A., Ohio Wesleyan University, 1983

Co-Editor and Contributor, Unpacking Global Amazon:  Work, Labor, and Community in E-Commerce Logistics and Warehousing (with Joao Paulo Veiga, Katiuscia Galhera and Nikko Bilitza) (Edward Elgar, forthcoming, 2026)

Co-Author, "Limits of Complementarity: Private Governance and Public Regulation of Labour Standards in Brazil’s Garment Supply Chain," Global Labour Journal (co-author with Katiuscia M. Galhera and Joao Paulo Veiga), 16:2 (May 2025), https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/5692

Co-Author, “Regional Governance Initiatives in Artificial Intelligence in South and Latin America,” in Leslie Elliott Armijo, Sybil Rhodes, and Markus Fraundorfer, eds., Policy Regionalism in South America: Drivers and Barriers (Routledge 2025)  https://www.routledge.com/South-American-Policy-Regionalism-Drivers-and-Barriers-to-International-Problem-Solving/Armijo-Fraundorfer-Rhodes/p/book/9781032747194

Co-Author, Labor Contestation at Walmart Brazil: Limits of Global Diffusion in Latin America, London:  Palgrave Macmillan, released September 2021 (with João Paulo Veiga and Katiuscia Galhera) https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030746711

 "Wal-Mart in Brazil:  From Global Diffusion to National Institutional Embeddedness," in Carolina Bank Muñoz, Bridget Kenny, and Antonio Stecher, eds., Walmart in the Global South: Workplace Culture, Labor Politics, and Supply Chains, Austin:  University of Texas Press (2018), with Joao Paulo Veiga and Katiuscia Galhera https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477315682/

Co-author, El Estado de Bienestar ante la Globalizacaión:  El Caso de Norteamérica (The Welfare State amidst Globalization:  The Experience of North America), Mexico City:  El Colegio de México, 2012, with Ilan Bizberg https://libros.colmex.mx/tienda/el-estado-de-bienestar-ante-la-globalizacion-el-caso-de-norteamerica/