Gabriel Leon-Ablan

Professor Gabriel Leon-Ablan holds a position at King’s College London’s Department of Political Economy, within the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy. His research focuses on social unrest, historical political economy, and slavery, with a particular emphasis on riots, protests, and institutional development. He earned a BA in applied mathematics from Harvard and a DPhil in economics from Oxford, and previously served as the Bevil Mabey Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge.

Leon-Ablan’s work examines topics such as the diffusion of violence, the causes/consequences of riots, and England’s political development. He is currently funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship for research on the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. His teaching includes courses on empirical political economy and economic history.

His recent publications analyze the 2011 London riots, Swing Riots of 1830-31, and democratic reforms’ impact on activism. He sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Peace Research and collaborates with research groups like the Quantitative Political Economy and Comparative Politics.

Notable awards include the Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2024-25). His research bridges formal theory and quantitative methods, often using archival data to explore historical and comparative political dynamics.