Graduate Student Affiliates of the Chicago Center on Democracy
The Chicago Center on Democracy’s Graduate Student Affiliates network is a group of graduate students at the Masters and PhD levels (or related, such as the Law School) at the University of Chicago who share research interests in topics related to democracy. They meet regularly to discuss and refine ideas on relevant topics. If you are interested in becoming a Graduate Student Affiliate, please click the button below.
Ada Bayramoglu
Masters student, Social Sciences
I research democracy in modern-day Turkey, concentrating on how populist, nationalist, and religious movements alter citizenship and a sense of belonging. Building on the early Republic’s history, I look at how many religiously conservative citizens’ sense of dignity, recognition, and political voice are still shaped by the moral scars and exclusions of secular nation-building. I’m particularly interested in how cultural narratives, such as popular histories and television dramas, rewrite memories of the Ottoman and republican past to make particular national visions seem morally compelling.
Asad Kaleem
Masters student, Harris School
I am particularly interested in analyzing the tools and methodologies that can strengthen political institutions and democracies in developing countries. Having observed a recurring pattern of democratic mechanisms being manipulated by entrenched power structures across the globe, I aim to explore the intersections where a socially efficient equilibrium for democracies can be identified—one that could serve as a foundation for their continued evolution.
Ayoub Wadood
Masters student, International Relations
I’m interested in the pursuit of democratic governance in the Middle East, with a particular focus on democratic participation and expansion in the Arabian Peninsula.
Bella Wexler
Masters student, International Relations
Bella Wexler is a Master’s student in the Committee on International Relations studying Taiwan’s democratic resilience. Her thesis explores how Taiwan centers civic engagement to counter Chinese digital disinformation. As rapid advancements in generative AI make disseminating disinformation easier than ever, Bella hopes to contribute to a growing body of literature on the importance of civic perspectives, improved institutional legibility, and the promotion of critical thinking to a thriving democracy.
Danni Tan
Masters student, Humanities
I am an MA student in the Humanities researching state-owned biometric identification systems. My work examines how these systems and the public policies surrounding them shape democratic practices, including citizenship rights, political participation, and government accountability, with particular attention to vulnerable populations such as migrants, low-income communities, the elderly, and religious minorities. I am especially interested in understanding how digital identity infrastructures influence the state–people relationship and can both challenge and reinforce democracy in contemporary societies.
David Crabtree
PhD student, Political Science
My research is on the resilience of democratic institutions. In the United States, I study election denialism and public faith in elections. Cross-nationally, I have studied how executives in presidential democracies circumvent their term limits to prolong their time in office. My work applies various quantitative and computational methods, including text-as-data and network analysis.
Egemen Aray
Masters student, Social Sciences
My research sits at the intersection of gender, migration, and democratic backsliding from a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on Europe. My earlier work examined shifts in political discourse on refugees in Turkey, tracing how exclusionary narratives became mainstreamed over time. I am currently engaged in comparative projects that analyze how illiberal governance shapes anti-gender public policy in Turkey and Hungary, as well as how opposition mayors in Warsaw and Istanbul frame urban resistance within authoritarian national political environments. Taken together, my research investigates how illiberal regimes consolidate power, and how alternative political actors contest these narratives.
Ernest Lee
PhD student, History
My broader historical project investigates energy systems in the postcolonial Third World, exploring the relationship between nationalist visions for energy production and distribution and international anti-imperial solidarities with a focus on West Africa and Southeast Asia. Although many such nationalist regimes styled themselves as democracies, military coups or authoritarian turns undermined these claims; what might the persistence of the logic of energy infrastructure and technocracy across such political transitions reveal about the failed promises of postcolonial democracy?
Fabrice Uwihirwe
Masters student, Social Sciences
My research examines African post-colonial states and what it means for democracy to reflect the will of the people when the demos face internal exclusion from political elites and international pressures from hegemons with specific agendas for these nations. I specifically examine constitution-building processes and their attempt to encapsulate this democratic will while declaring the state’s values and vision for the future.
Harrington Fan
Masters student, Computational Social Science
My research focuses on political violence and civil conflicts, with a particular interest in transitional justice and democratization in state-building. I explore questions such as which mechanisms of post-conflict reconciliation are most effective in different historical, cultural, and geographic contexts. I’m also eager to investigate broader puzzles, including what motivates inter-group violence and how the colonial legacy of identity formation influences democratization today. I plan to use computational methods, with a potential emphasis on geographical data, to support my research. I hold a B.A. in Political Science and Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.
Hera Shakil
PhD student, Comparative Human Development
My research seeks to understand why growth in the middle-classes is correlated with a political culture of democratic backsliding in postcolonial global-south. Focusing on the case of present day India, I use a person centered, qualitative and bottom-up approach to understand how the Indian middle-classes develop and maintain their political cultures? What kind of political identities do they espouse and to what extent can these cultures be characterized anti-democratic? A secondary focus also aims to understand how individuals form political and ideological beliefs and how their relationship with nationalism, nationhood and geographical identity is shaped over time and what we can understand about individual political identity formation at the micro-level through these macro-level shifts in Indian politics.
Jack Wagner
Masters student, Social Sciences
My research focuses on the Chartist critique of abolitionism from 1830 to 1850. The research explores how the growing class conflicts of the post-Reform Bill era mediated how Chartists and other working-class radicals came to understand the abolitionist movement, the necessity of working-class political independence, and broader questions related to the emerging system of industrial capitalism, proletarianization, and the emancipation of labor.
Jacob Rampino
Masters student, Computational Social Science
I research the relationship between mass media and public discourse in democratic societies using data-driven approaches, examining how power and ideology shape the production, dissemination, and prioritization of knowledge. I’m particularly interested in how these dynamics distort information environments and erode civic engagement. With a background in political science, history, and journalism, I am currently pursuing graduate studies in computational social science.
Jacob Sagers
Masters student, Computational Social Science
My research examines the role of norms in shaping democratic backsliding internationally. I am also interested in how identity, nationalism, and diplomacy operate across different contexts, such as the digital and post-colonial environments. Methodologically, I plan to employ computational approaches, particularly network analysis, to support my research in International Relations. I have previously studied how colonial legacies and institutional path dependencies in the Middle East and North Africa influence democratization processes.
Jiahang Luo
Masters student, Computational Social Science
Jiahang Luo is a master’s student in Computer and Social Science at the University of Chicago whose research uses computational social science to study democracy, nationalism, and political communication. His current projects combine large-scale text analysis, machine learning, and visualization to examine how U.S. and international media frame democratic values and national identity, and how these narratives shape public attitudes toward China and Russia. He is also interested in how digital platforms and AI governance can support democratic resilience and protect citizens, especially youth, online.
Joseph Shumunov
Masters student, International Relations
My research focuses on the rise of illiberalism and competitive authoritarianism in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on how strongman leaders manipulate democratic institutions and norms and use foreign policy to maintain legitimacy. I also examine how corruption, disinformation, and media capture distort the marketplace of ideas and weaken democratic accountability, particularly in relation to foreign policy dissent. I also serve as the co-chair of the Social Sciences Division at the Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.
Joshua Elster
Masters student, Social Sciences
My research interests center on the ways that the general public interacts with scientific knowledge. People have access to a wide variety of sources of information, and too often chose sources that are more biased and less true than academic research. My research is focused on increasing the utility of consuming scientific research. The practical consequences of this work as it relates to democracy include a public that is better informed, less susceptible to propaganda, and better able to vote in its interests.
Kevin Angell
PhD student, Political Economy (Political Science and Harris School)
My research focusses on studying American political institutions at the national and subnational level, determining the impact of ordinary, non-political interactions on political processes, and seeking to develop new ways to measure and gather data on democratic activity. My current work examines the role in how government capacity impacts the success of democratic government in US states.
Kristoff Cao
Masters student, Social Sciences
I am a MAPSS–QMSA master’s student at the University of Chicago with a dual B.A. in Political Science and Mathematics from Carleton College. My research uses quantitative methods to study authoritarian politics and democratic backsliding. I use quantitative methods to study how pro-regime mass mobilization shapes democratic outcomes and how autocratic states coordinate and diffuse practices of transnational repression.
Morish Shah
Masters student, Precision Health
Morish Shah is a Master of Science in Precision Health candidate at the University of Chicago studying how artificial intelligence and digital health tools shape public trust, accountability, and participation in healthcare systems. His work examines the governance structures needed to ensure that emerging technologies support democratic values such as transparency, equity, and civic agency in clinical and public health decision making.
Neves Liu
Masters student, Digital Studies
Neves Liu is an MA student in Digital Studies at the University of Chicago, researching how digital media infrastructures, algorithms, and global communication environments influence public discourse and civic participation. Her work examines the impact of AI-generated narratives on democratic values, online political engagement, and the dynamics of trust in digital publics. She is particularly interested in how storytelling, platform design, and transnational media ecosystems shape collective behavior and democratic resilience.
Nilesh Kavthekar
Masters student, Public Policy
My research interests lie in participatory democracy and the relationship between technology and democracy. Technological developments pose new risks to democratic participation (e.g. finely-targeted misinformation campaigns). On the other hand, new technologies (e.g. mediation and consensus-finding tools, polling techniques) can allow more people to access and participate in democratic institutions. I’m interested in understanding how to mitigate the risks and harness the benefits of technology to enhance democratic norms and institutions.
Pablo Ferreyros
Masters student, Public Policy
I am interested in judicial politics, political institutions, and energy politics/foreign investment in Latin America. My current work assesses how endogenous judicial empowerment can be driven by judicial expectations regarding the stability of political preferences within the court. In the near future, I will also cover comparative experiences of political crisis and democratic backsliding in Latin America.
Rahman Shanq
Masters student, Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History
My research interrogates the philosophical roots of democracy and its grounding in truth, justice and human dignity. I view democracy not only as governance but as a moral project that depends on shared understandings of reality, and as the expression of collective free will. I examine how these foundations are challenged by digital authoritarianism, where media infrastructures and political economies of information shape human consciousness, limit political possibility, and redefine the relationship between citizens and power. I am further interested in democratic movements in autocracies, studying how civil rights actors generate political agency and protect collective values even under extreme surveillance, repression and fear. Building on these concerns, I explore the pragmatics of democratic change—its transformation and collapse—alongside institutional dynamics in resource-rich contexts, as well as democratic values and perceptions in MENA societies, where religion (especially Islam) plays a formative role in shaping concepts of legitimacy, justice and participation.
Sawyer Wampler
Masters student, Social Sciences
My research investigates the political processees, both micro and macro, that help shape democratic representation and participation. I specifically examine how intraparty dynamics, community organizing, and U.S. third parties foster inclusive democratic institutions. My scholarship combines data-driven methods with a comparative perspective on political institutions, helping further research on democratic resilience.
Sylvia Dou
Masters student, Social Sciences
I am a master student in Social Sciences, concentrating on Political Science, at the University of Chicago working at the intersection of political communication and computational social science. My research examines how democratic trust and affective polarization evolve in response to political shocks and elite-led narratives, using text-as-data from U.S. social media. I am especially interested in mechanisms such as moralization, misperceptions, and information environments that shape how citizens interpret institutions and opposition. More broadly, I study how institutional contexts and media systems condition democratic resilience in comparative perspective.
Tim O’Brien
Masters student, International Relations
Tim O’Brien is a master’s student in the Committee on International Relations program at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the economic determinants of democratization, theories of democracy, and quantitative methods. He is particularly interested in applying causal inference methods to study the long-term impacts of globalization, inequality, and innovation on democratization. Before beginning his graduate studies, he earned a BA in political science from the University of Chicago.
Tingfeng Yan
PhD student, Social Thought and History
I research how American revolutionaries engaged with constitutionalism amidst ongoing contestations over socio-political issues in the Founding-era US. A wide range of revolutionaries, from more popular to more elite figures, participated in the making of state and federal constitutions. They also struggled over these constitutions — in terms of their legitimacy, implementation, and amendments — in ongoing contentions about how the revolutionary governments should tackle pressing issues, such as the mobilization of militia and debtor relief. In my research, I highlight the democratic nature of constitutional contestations in the Founding-era US.
Varun Natarajan
Masters student, Precision Health
As a Precision Health graduate student, I am learning how data-driven health systems can reduce inequities that undermine democratic participation and public trust. My work focuses on structural determinants of health, particularly food insecurity and variable access to care, as key levers for strengthening equitable governance. I aim to bridge scientific research, community intervention, and policy design to support democratic resilience. I also work in the nonprofit space to address food insecurity through community-based nutrition and cooking events, and I continue to conduct research aimed at reducing health inequities and strengthening equitable access to care.
Will Zheng
Masters student, International Relations
My research focuses on the evolution and persistence of violent extremist groups in democracies, especially in the United States. Drawing on theories of framing, social movements, and cognitive schemata, I explore questions such as why certain violence-justifying frames endure and how they shape individuals’ cognitive vulnerability to extremist mobilization. Adopting a social constructivist perspective, I primarily use historical case analysis and archival data to support my research. I am currently pursuing my M.A. degree in the Committee on International Relations (CIR) at the University of Chicago.
Xiaoxin He
Masters student, Social Sciences
Xiaoxin He is a Master’s student in Social Science at the University of Chicago, focusing on political parties and political communication. Her research examines the rise of niche parties, particularly Green and populist parties in Europe. She holds a BA and MA in Political Science from Fudan University, China.
Yang Xiang
Doctoral student, Sociology
My interest is in democratic backsliding in a decentered globalism. My research focuses not only on the institutional, structural and cultural origin of de-democratization, but also studies how the crisis-talk of liberal democracy makes sense and shifts in sequences of events, from the beginning of the third wave to today. My overarching goal is processualizing and historicizing democratization.
YooJin Lim
Masters student, International Relations
While my research is not centered on democracy itself, I investigate how leader-level personal ties influence China–North Korea relations within an authoritarian context. Understanding these political dynamics contributes to broader discussions about democratic resilience, international norms, and the challenges democracies face in an evolving global order.
Zachary Garai
J.D. student, Law School
Democratic resilience begins with strong institutions. My research takes an institutional and quantitative approach to questions of election administration and voter participation, with a particular focus on election administrators’ responses to crisis situations. Currently, my research focuses on election administrators’ social media usage and on the impacts of hurricanes on 2024 election policies and voter turnout.
Zachary Miranda
Masters student, Computer Science
My research uses natural language processing to explore the intersection of language and democratic erosion. Specifically, I am developing computational methods that draw on real-time news and structured event databases to identify, rank, and classify episodes of democratic erosion and their relation to authoritarianism. By identifying the language used in describing these events and how it changes over time, these methods allow us to monitor erosion as it happens. The resulting data produce a detailed historical record of erosion events, making it possible to analyze democratic decline over time at a finer granularity.