Dr Raluca L. Pahontu is a Lecturer in Political Behaviour at King’s College London’s Department of Political Economy, within the School of Politics & Economics (Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy). She holds affiliations with Nuffield College (Associate Member) and LSE’s US Centre (Affiliate). She earned a DPhil in Political Science from Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at LSE. Her research focuses on risk, inequality, and political behavior, using quantitative methods to analyze historical and contemporary issues in Europe and the US. Key areas include disaster politics, wealth disparities’ impact on voting (e.g., Brexit), and long-term effects of economic shocks (e.g., famines, pandemics). She leads the Quantitative Political Economy Research Group, bridging economics and political science through formal modeling. Recent work explores how natural disasters reshape voting patterns in the US, how malnutrition affects political preferences, and Brexit’s economic correlates. These studies combine administrative data, experiments, and historical records to trace causal pathways between material conditions and political choices. Her teaching includes advanced courses on quantitative methods and comparative political systems. She actively supervises PhD students using quantitative approaches in political economy and behavior.









