Laurel Yacuta

Dr. Laurel Yacuta is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the causes of intrastate violence, particularly examining how regime types and civil liberties influence such conflicts. She specializes in methodological approaches like multi-dimensional scaling, experiments, and spatial analysis.

• Education:
• Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, UC Davis
• PhD in Political Science, UC Davis
• Research Interests:
• Political violence, civil war, regime measurement, democratization, and autocratization across regions like Russia, Eastern Europe, and India.
• Consulting: Collaborated with the World Bank on survey analysis and political violence issues in Central Asia and Zimbabwe.

Her current projects include analyzing religious organizational structures' impact on outgroup violence in India and studying voter behavior under state repression in Zimbabwe. She teaches courses on comparative politics, Eastern European politics, and international relations in Western Europe.