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 lies at the intersection of Comparative Politics and the Political Psychology of Conflict. My work investigates when and why democracies include citizens and noncitizens, examining the causes, consequences, and remedies of forced migration and large-scale political and criminal violence in Latin America. I am particularly interested in how the political voices of immigrants and victims of human rights violations mobilize citizens to hold politicians accountable for abusing the state’s coercive power in violent, unequal societies. My research leverages a range of research designs and data sources, including field and natural experiments, large-scale surveys, qualitative fieldwork, and administrative data.

My first book project examines how 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