I am an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. I received my PhD in Political Science in 2024 from the University of Notre Dame.

My research investigates the causes and consequences of political violence, organized crime, and international migration, with a regional focus on Latin America. I study native-immigrant relations, state repression, democratic accountability, and transitional justice. My work leverages field and natural experiments, large-scale surveys, qualitative fieldwork, and administrative data to shed light on democratic norms and marginalized groups’ everyday interactions with the coercive state.

A central strand of my work asks how societies can hold politicians accountable for abusing the state’s coercive power. My first book project examines how political elites legitimize human rights abuses against stigmatized groups—and how marginalized groups mobilize demands for truth and justice in unequal societies marked by pervasive impunity. This project received the 2025 Best Dissertation Awards in Political Psychology and Experimental Research from the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Kellogg Institute's Best Dissertation on Democracy and Human Development Award, and an Honorable Mention from the International Society of Political Psychology. 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 conditionally accepted in the American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Political Psychology, Political Science Research and Methods, 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), 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.

Contact

nskigin@uga.edu