Bryn Rosenfeld

Bryn Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and co-Principal Investigator of the Russian Election Study, funded by the National Science Foundation and NCEEER. Her research focuses on comparative political behavior, particularly voter behavior in authoritarian regimes, post-communist politics, and survey methodology. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and previously served as an Assistant Professor at USC and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Education: Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University (2010s). Prior roles include work with the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Opinion Research analyzing Soviet public opinion, and editorship of The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. She has received major awards including the APSA Best Book Award (2022), Ed A. Hewett Book Prize, and Juan Linz Dissertation Prize.

Research emphasizes how economic dependency fuels authoritarian resilience, as detailed in her acclaimed book The Autocratic Middle Class (Princeton, 2021). Her work bridges empirical methods and policy-relevant analysis, with frequent commentary in media like Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, and Bloomberg. Current projects explore information politics in autocracies and public opinion dynamics during wartime.

• Key Awards: APSA Democracy & Autocracy Best Book (2022), ASEEES Hewett Prize, Frances Rosenbluth Prize
• Media Engagement: Over 200 media contributions since 2020 addressing Russian public opinion, Ukraine conflict, and authoritarian regime dynamics

Her grants include NSF funding for the Russian Election Study and CSS grants for social science research. She collaborates with international scholars through Cornell’s Center for Social Sciences and affiliated institutes.