Roya Talibova

Roya Talibova is the Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Assistant Professor of Public Policy at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her research and teaching focus on political violence and its long-run effects on political economy and development, historical political economy, and quantitative methods. Talibova studies combat motivation in authoritarian regimes and the ways in which repression and ethnic identity interact with individual and group combat experiences.

Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Economic Journal and Journal of Peace Research and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the University of Michigan’s Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, Institute for Social Research, and Center for the Education of Women, among others.

Talibova is the winner of Pi Sigma Alpha Overall Conference Best Paper Award, Kellogg/Notre Dame Best Paper Award in Comparative Politics, Robert H. Durr Best Paper Award in Quantitative Methods, Best Paper in International Relations, Best Paper in Political Behavior awards from the Midwest Political Science Association, Dina Zinnes and Patricia Weitsman Best Paper awards from the International Studies Association, David Brian Robertson Best Paper Award from the History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association, and the Best Paper Award of the American Political Science Association's Democracy and Autocracy section. Her dissertation won the Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics and the Best Dissertation Award of the American Political Science Association's Democracy and Autocracy section.

Talibova received her PhD in Political Science and Scientific Computing and a dual MS in Statistics in 2022 from the University of Michigan, an MPA degree from Harvard Kennedy School, an MA in International Relations from Seton Hall University’s John Whitehead School of Diplomacy, and a BA in International Relations and European Studies (with distinction) from the Azerbaijan University of Foreign Languages. She was previously a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Pennsylvania's DevLab@Penn and a Rackham predoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Talibova was an assistant professor at the Political Science Department and the Data Science Institute at Vanderbilt University.