Nina McMurry

Nina McMurry is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT (2020) and previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Her research focuses on political accountability, representation, and state-building in post-colonial democracies, with a particular emphasis on Indigenous rights and governance in the Philippines. She has conducted fieldwork in the Philippines, South Africa, Guatemala, South Sudan, and the U.S.

Education: B.A. in Political Science (Stanford University), Ph.D. in Political Science (MIT). Professional Affiliations: Research Affiliate at MIT GOV/LAB, MIT Political Methodology Lab. Grants: Supported by Making All Voices Count, J-PAL, Social Science Research Council, and others.

Research Interests:

• Accountability mechanisms in clientelistic democracies
• Indigenous autonomy and state integration
• Effects of aid and governance reforms
• State surveillance and privacy

Teaching: Courses include Identity Politics in Non-Western Worlds, Comparative Representation, and Introduction to Comparative Politics at Vanderbilt, as well as quantitative methods courses at MIT.

Grants & Awards:

• Lucian Pye Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis
• SEAPRG Emerging Scholar Best Paper Award (2019)
• APSA Public Scholarship Program Recognition

Labs/Teams: Co-leads the Subnational Nonstate Actor Governance Project (with Michael Rubin & Andrew Halterman), involved in the South African Councillor Panel Study.