Laura Paler Provost Associate Professor Government
- Degrees
- PhD, Columbia University
MPhil, Oxford University (St. Antony’s College)
B.A., The George Washington University - Bio
-
Laura Paler specializes in comparative politics, with a focus on the political economy of development and intergroup conflict, prejudice, and polarization. Dr. Paler primarily conducts large-scale field research projects involving experiments and original data collection. She has conducted research in a number of countries, including Indonesia, Colombia, Uganda, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the United States. Her research appears in leading journals in the discipline, including The Â鶹´«Ã½ Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies.
Dr. Paler is also Co-Director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, a global partnership of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners focused on using evidence to combat democratic erosion worldwide. DEC is supported by a grant based at AU and works to mitigate erosion through education; producing a democratic erosion events dataset; running a summer fellowship program for students; publishing policy and evidence briefs; and hosting events for the public.
Prior to coming to AU-SPA, Dr. Paler was an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, a fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University, and a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. She obtained her PhD in political science from Columbia University.
Areas of Expertise
Comparative politics; the political economy of development; political behavior; intergroup conflict and polarization; democratic erosion and backsliding; causal inference.
- See Also
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Fall 2024
-
GOVT-130 Comparative Politics
-
GOVT-898 Doctoral Continuing Enrollment
Spring 2025
-
GOVT-231 Politics in Developing World