Graduate Student Fellows

	Name
	Olivia Babcock Graduate Student Fellow Olivia Babcock is a second-year Master’s in Public Administration student and Reynolds Leadership Fellow at Cornell. She holds a B.A. in history from the University of Puget Sound where she focused on South Africa’s transition to democracy and restorative peace efforts. Since then, she has served as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Zambia, a leader for the Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program, Program Coordinator at World Learning, and most recently a program impact intern with the Global Livingston Institute. At Cornell, Olivia has focused on drone proliferation, arms regulation, and genocide. She hopes to work in the international sector focusing on human rights, international education, and peacebuilding.
	Esam Boraey Graduate Student Fellow Esam is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Politics and Political Economy. His work focuses on building bridges between academia and practice to advance democracy and combat democratic backsliding worldwide. Esam brings more than a decade of experience in democratization, international development, and human rights, having worked with leading global organizations, political institutions, and grassroots movements across the Middle East and the United States. He has served in senior roles with USAID, the United States Institute of Peace, and international civil society initiatives, and has managed and advised numerous political campaigns at the state and national levels in the U.S. His academic research examines the intersection of authoritarianism, political economy, and social movements in the Middle East, with a particular focus on how governance structures and civic engagement shape democratic outcomes.
	Amanda Chen Graduate Student Fellow Amanda S. Chen is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Government at Cornell University studying the political development of the American public education system and its relationship to the perpetuation of racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Employing frameworks from American Political Development and American Political Economy, her research broadly investigates the effects of institutional constraints on political development, specifically as it relates to race and socioeconomic inequality, democratic advancement and backsliding, and education policy. Her previous research has examined how federalism shapes democratization and racial progress. Amanda obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
	Sophie Jaeger Visiting Student Fellow
	Yondonjamts Jigjidsuren Graduate Student Fellow Yondonjamts Jigjidsuren (Yondon, He/Him) is a Master of Public Administration student in the Brooks School of Public Policy. Originally from Los Angeles CA, he lived abroad as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia. After completing my service in 2025, he taught English at a local adult school until moving to Ithaca, NY. His research interests include democracies in Central Asia, Mongolia, and the effect of Public Administration in democracies from the Global South. Outside of school, I love hiking and exploring the natural beauty that Upstate New York has to offer.
	Dayra Lascano Graduate Student Fellow Dayra Lascano is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University, specializing in international relations with a minor in comparative politics. Her research examines how great-power rivalry reshapes regional institutions in Latin America, and when those institutions enforce or abandon their own democratic commitments. Her dissertation, "Regional Institutions Under Geoeconomic Rivalry: The Politics of Institutional Change," combines original datasets, systematic text coding, and comparative case work across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. A related project analyzes more than 3,200 hand-coded recommendations issued by OAS Electoral Observation Missions between 1999 and 2024, asking what actually drives what international observers are able to say about electoral integrity. She is a 2026 Kohut Research Scholar at Cornell's Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and a graduate researcher in the Gender and the Security Sector Lab.
	Emma MacCallum Graduate Student Fellow Emma MacCallum is a PhD student in Comparative Politics with a regional focus on Latin America. Her research centers on how civil society sectors impact democratic strength and stability, especially in contexts with high levels of state and criminal violence. Emma's work also examines the implications of foreign aid, and the contraction of US foreign aid, for civil society sectors in Latin America. She leverages extensive fieldwork, mixing qualitative and quantitative methods.
	Izza Malik Graduate Student Fellow Izza is a PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University, researching political disengagement, elections, social media, and competitive authoritarian politics in South Asia.
	Lois Matthew Graduate Student Fellow Lois is a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics, with minor fields in International Relations and Methods, in the Department of Government at Cornell University. My research examines how citizens navigate political life under conditions of contested democracy and fractured statehood. Prior to Cornell, I completed a B.Sc. in Political Science at the University of Benin, Nigeria, where I graduated as the department’s Best Graduating Student (summa cum laude) and received a dissertation distinction. I hold graduate fellowships with Cornell’s Center on Global Democracy and the Institute for African Development (IAD). My work has received support from the American Political Science Association, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Cornell Center for the Social Sciences, and the Cornell Society for the Humanities Dissertation Writing Groups.
	Thomas G. Paquette Graduate Student Fellow Thomas Gareau-Paquette is a PhD student in American Politics at Cornell University’s Department of Government. His research examines the formation and evolution of cleavages and party politics across Canada, the United States, Western Europe, and other post-industrial democracies. He is particularly interested in public support for welfare protections and how attitudes toward inequality shape political behaviour in contexts of democratic backsliding and profound economic change. His work also explores “welfare chauvinism,” labour-market insecurity, the political economy of housing, and the “diploma divide.” Thomas holds an MA in Political Science from McGill University and a BSc in Political Science from the Université de Montréal.
	Petra Radic Visiting Student Fellow
	Sebastian Restrepo Rodriguez Graduate Student Fellow Sebastián Restrepo Rodríguez is a Ph.D. student in City and Regional Planning at Cornell University whose research examines peace agreement implementation, multilevel governance, and territorial development. His doctoral research focuses on the implementation of Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement, studying how institutional capacity and coordination across levels of government shape implementation and contribute to uneven outcomes across territories. His broader interests include democratic governance, public policy implementation, decentralization, and post-conflict development. Before beginning his Ph.D., Sebastián worked for more than eight years at Colombia’s National Planning Department, where he contributed to national and territorial development policies and coordinated the implementation of the multipurpose cadaster program linked to the Peace Agreement. He holds master’s degrees in Public Policy and Industrial Engineering from Universidad de los Andes and is a Fulbright-MinCiencias Scholar.
	Rocío Salas-Lewin Graduate Student Fellow Rocío is a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics at Cornell University’s Department of Government. Her research centers on social movements, electoral behavior, far-right demand, and public opinion, with a regional focus on Latin America and Southern Europe. Her work examines how individuals behave in crises of political representation, and how those crises reshape broader political attitudes. She is particularly interested in the interaction between contentious and institutional behavior. Methodologically, she relies primarily on survey research and statistical modeling, but is committed to a multi-method approach that brings in qualitative techniques to capture the complexity underlying these phenomena.
	Greta Schenke Graduate Student Fellow Greta is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government. In her dissertation, she studies the politics of nation-state making, migration, and the labor market in Germany. Her research on contemporary politics focuses on democratic representation, electoral institutions, and elite responsiveness. Methodologically, she employs qualitative and quantitative methods, combining historical and archival evidence with quantitative observational data and quasi-experimental designs for causal inference.
	Julius Strunk Visiting Student Fellow
	Roderick Wijunamai Graduate Student Fellow Roderick Wijunamai is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Cornell University and a Fellow at The Highland Institute in Kohima, Nagaland. His research examines political and economic life in Northeast India, with a focus on how state projects reshape land, livelihoods, and forms of political belonging. His doctoral research explores the uptake of oil palm in the region and how geographies at the margins are integrated into the national economy. Before coming to Cornell, he was a Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan. His research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the American Ethnological Society, Cornell’s Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and others.
	Jacob Winter Postdoctoral Fellow

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