Research

Graduate Fellows

Yasaman Baghban

Yasaman Baghban is a PhD student in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. She studies human rights, feminism, essay films, personal documentaries, and nonfiction art.

Alice Brocheux

Alice Brocheux is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Rochester. She studies comparative politics, with a focus on trust in institutions and collective memory. She is also interested in the role of elite actors in enabling or preventing democratic backsliding. Her methodological focus is on survey experiments.

Alexsandra Cavalcanti

Alexsandra Cavalcanti is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Rochester. She holds an MSc in Political Science from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. Her research interests include institutions, distributive politics, development economics, and research methods. Her current project examines how control institutions influence public policy outcomes by shaping incentives for corruption control.

Kirill Kazantcev

Kirill Kazantcev's Headshot

Kirill Kazantcev is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. His research examines the political dynamics of conflict, including why individuals fight or withdraw, how states behave during war, and how citizens respond to violence, using survey and field experiments. As a Democracy Center Graduate Fellow, he will study how public opinion and international conflict shape one another across authoritarian and democratic settings.

Bingru Li

Bingru Li's Headshot

Bingru Li is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on conflict, political violence, and their consequences, with an emphasis on formal theory. Her current projects examine why governments relinquish their monopoly on violence by empowering potentially threatening militias and why combatants destroy valuable resources during war.

Neeley Pate

Neeley Pate's Headshot

Neeley Pate is a PhD candidate at the University of Rochester in the Computer Science department. She is interested in utilizing emerging technologies to minimize polarization and misinformation. Her work currently focuses on motivated reasoning, specifically quantifying and classifying motivations, as well as architecting systems to improve conversation around difficult topics

Josiah Rath

Josiah Rath is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. He studies international relations, comparative politics, and formal theory. His work focuses on conflict and social norms across democratic and authoritarian contexts.

Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on the comparative politics of developing democracies, with a particular emphasis on Latin America and Mexico. As a Democracy Center Graduate Fellow, he will examine the ways in which national politics and local politics are intertwined in developing countries.

Dot Sawler

Dot Sawler's Headshot Dot Sawler is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. Her work focuses on developing empirical tools and techniques to measure political beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes in the mass public. She is particularly interested in studying social trust and hostility toward political out-groups in the United States.

Yu Xia

Yu Xia's Headshot Yu Xia is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. Her research lies at the intersection of political violence, state building, and organizational behavior. As a Democracy Center Graduate Fellow, she will examine how governments can address security threats without exacerbating popular grievances and how coercive institutions shape political transitions.

Xingyu Zhou

Xingyu Zhou is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. His work spans both theoretical models of political control in authoritarian regimes and empirical applications of these models in China. As a Democracy Center Graduate Fellow, he will study the effectiveness of centralized and decentralized propaganda.