Laura Paler Associate Professor Government
- Degrees
- PhD, Columbia University
MPhil, Oxford University (St. Antony’s College)
B.A., The George Washington University - Bio
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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 American 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
- Personal Website
- The Democratic Erosion Consortium
- 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
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GOVT-130 Comparative Politics
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GOVT-898 Doctoral Continuing Enrollment
Spring 2025
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GOVT-231 Politics in Developing World