Elizabeth Nugent, former Postdoctoral Research Fellow, receives APSA’s Comparative Democratization Best Paper Award

Elizabeth R. Nugent, former MEI Postdoctoral Research Fellow, has been given the APSA Comparative Democratization Section Best Paper Award for a paper presented at the 2017 APSA meeting titled, "The Psychology of Repression and Polarization in Authoritarian Regimes." She also received Honorable Mention for both the Comparative Democratization Best Field Work Award and the Juan Linz Best Dissertation Award.

As of July 1, 2018, Nugent is now an assistant professor at Yale University’s Department of Political Science. Before joining MEI, she received her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.

During her time at MEI, Nugent worked on a number of projects, including a book manuscript, which according to her website is tentatively titled The Psychology of Repression: Identity and Polarization in Authoritarian Regimes, which "develops and tests an original theory of state repression and its effects on processes of polarization in authoritarian contexts. The project employs a mixed methods approach, including lab experimental tests of the theory’s micro-foundational psychological mechanism and case studies of repression and polarization in Egypt and Tunisia based on in-depth fieldwork in both countries." She also gave a fellowship talk titled, "The Political Psychology of Repression: Identity and Polarization in Egypt and Tunisia" and released a working paper in the MEI Research Series, "The Psychology of Repression and Polarization in Authoritarian Regimes."