معرفی
Natalie Letsa is the Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the University of Oklahoma's Department of International and Area Studies, affiliated with the David L. Boren College of International Studies. She will assume the role of Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina's Political Science Department in Fall 2025. Her research focuses on public opinion dynamics in authoritarian regimes, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing the interplay between historical colonial legacies and contemporary political behavior.
- Education: Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University (2017), B.A. in Political Science from Reed College.
- Postdoctoral Work: Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (2018-2019).
Her research explores regime stability in autocracies, electoral autocracy dynamics, and the transmission of political identities across generations. Notably, her book manuscript The Autocratic Voter: Partisanship and Political Socialization under Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) analyzes partisanship formation in electoral autocracies through social identity theory. Recent work with Martha Wilfahrt investigates colonial legacies’ impact on West African political behaviors.
Her articles analyze topics such as expressive voting in Cameroon, electoral geography in Africa, and colonial governance’s economic legacies. She serves as Director of OU’s African Studies Institute and has held grants from institutions like the National Science Foundation.
