Organizers

Asli Cansunar

(Joining in Fall 2026)

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. Before joining the University of Washington faculty, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College and the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Oxford. I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science (2018) and an MA in Economics (2014) from Duke University.

My main research interests involve comparative political economy and historical political economy, focusing on the causes and consequences of economic, social, and ethnoreligious inequality. In particular, I am interested in (i) microfoundations of individual preferences for redistribution and social policies, (ii) distributive politics in developing countries; and (iii) the historical political economy of nation-making and state-building in diverse societies. My research is concentrated in advanced industrialized countries and the Middle East, especially Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

My papers have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, World Politics, the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, the Journal of Historical Political Economy, and West European Politics. I am a Faculty Fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), UW Near and Middle Eastern Studies, UW Middle East Center, UW Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, and UW Center for Environmental Politics. I’m also on the board of ASREC and the editorial board of the Journal of Historical Political Economy.

My research has won discipline-wide awards including APSA MENA Politics Section Best Article Award (2023), Weber Best Paper in Religion and Politics Award by the APSA Religion & Politics Section (2024), Best Paper on Social and Economic Inequality Award by the Inequality & Class Section of the American Political Science Association (2024), and APSA MENA Politics Section Best Paper Award (2025).

Besides my research, I teach courses on comparative politics, historical political economy, Middle East politics, and geospatial methods.

You can find more information on my website or my Google Scholar page.

Dmitrii Kofanov

I am a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. 

My research interests lie in the sphere of comparative politics and historical political economy with a focus on Russia and Eastern European countries. In particular, I study conflict, diversity, and political and economic development in late Imperial Russia.

I hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institutions and Political Economy Research Group (IPErG) at the University of Barcelona. 

My dissertation won the Ronald H. Coase Dissertation Award for the best doctoral dissertation in institutional and organizational economics and the UW–Madison Political Science Department’s award for the best dissertation in Comparative Politics. My work has been published or is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Comparative Politics, European Review of Economic History, Slavic Review, and other journals.

You can find more information on my website or my Google Scholar page.

Tine N. Paulsen

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at University of Southern California. 

My research lies at the intersection of comparative politics and political economy, with a focus on formal political institutions and their effects on representation, economic policies, and citizen welfare. My research frequently combines advanced statistical methods and archival research, using primary source material and historical data from Western Europe and North America.

My work has been published or is forthcoming in The American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and Electoral Studies. 

My book project analyzes why national politicians reform local electoral institutions and how these changes affect national politicians, local politicians, and the population they are meant to represent. I am particularly interested in the interplay between different levels of aggregation in politics and how reforms to one level can have dramatic effects on other levels.

I hold a Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at New York University and an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. I received my B.A. in Political Science from New York University Abu Dhabi as part of its first cohort.

You can find more information on my website or my Google Scholar page.

Jan P. Vogler

I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University.

I have four different research agendas: (1) “The Political Economy of Public Bureaucracy,” (2) “The Political Economy of Rivalry and Competition,” (3) “The Political Economy of the European Union,” and (4) “The Historical Political Economy of Democracy and Authoritarianism.” Detailed information can be found on my website.

Prior to my current appointment, I held positions as an assistant professor at the University of Konstanz and a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics. And before that, I was a Ph.D. student at Duke University. The book project based on my dissertation is entitled The Political Economy of Public Bureaucracy: The Emergence of Modern Administrative Organizations. The underlying dissertation received two honorable mentions: one for the Ernst Haas Award (European Politics and Society) and another one for the Ronald Coase Award (Institutional and Organizational Economics).

My work has been published or is forthcoming in World Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, Constitutional Political Economy,  the Journal of Historical Political Economy, the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, European Union Politics, and the Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy.

You can find more information on my website or my Google Scholar page.

Florian M. Hollenbach

I am currently an associate professor in the Department of International Economics, Government, and Business at the Copenhagen Business School. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in May 2015. Prior to joining CBS, I was an assistant professor in Political Science at Texas A&M University.

My current research focuses on the political economy of state capacity, money in politics, and state development, specifically the development of fiscal capacity and taxation. I am also interested in the (historical) political economy of universities and political methodology.

You can find more information on my website at: fhollenbach.org or my Google Scholar page.

Jan H. Pierskalla

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Ohio State University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in 2012.

I am broadly interested in the political economy of state-building, development, and order. You can find more information on my website or my Google Scholar page.