Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Starting in fall 2025, I will be an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. My research investigates contemporary challenges to democracy, examining the causes, consequences, and remedies of intergroup conflict, forced migration, and large-scale violence in Latin America. How can we motivate the political mobilization of citizens to demand justice for human rights violations and reduce conflict in polarized societies? I answer this question by studying how the political voices of immigrants and racial minorities promote solidarity and mobilize citizens to hold politicians accountable for abusing the state’s coercive power. I draw on causal inference, surveys, qualitative fieldwork, and insights from political psychology to investigate how governments and societies treat disadvantaged groups—and how marginalized populations strive for inclusion.

My first book project examines the ways in which political elites legitimize human rights abuses against stigmatized groups—and how victims' organizations mobilize demands for justice to hold politicians accountable in Mexico's War on Drugs. My second book project (with Abby Córdova) explores the positive role of immigrants’ agency in countering misperceptions and promoting support for inclusionary policies.

My work has been published or accepted in Perspectives on Politics, Political Psychology, Party Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly [2x], and Research and Politics, and is under advance contract with Cambridge University Press. It has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the American Political Science Association (APSA), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP), and the Kellogg Institute, among others. I was also a 2023-2024 Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar, a USIP-Minerva Peace and Security Scholar, and the 2023 APSA Political Psychology Distinguished Junior Scholar.

I received my PhD in Political Science in 2024 from the University of Notre Dame, where I am a research affiliate at the Kellogg Institute's Violence and Transitional Justice Lab and the Eliminating Violence Against Women Lab.

Contact

nskigin@fas.harvard.edu