Brendan McElroy

Brendan McElroy is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, affiliated with the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies. His research examines state formation and elite transformation in early modern Europe, particularly through parliamentary institutions and agrarian reform. McElroy's current book project investigates divergent agricultural modernization outcomes across Central and Eastern European states during the late 18th century.

His methodological approach combines archival research across multiple countries with theoretical challenges to conventional state formation paradigms. Prior appointments include a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan's Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (2020-2022).

McElroy received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where his dissertation won the APSA Politics and History Section's Walter Dean Burnham Prize in 2021.