Research Team

Sejung Ahn
Rep. of Korea

Sejung is from the Republic of Korea. She is interested in welfare state politics.
Country: Republic of Korea

Christina Corduneanu-Huci
Romania

Cristina is originally from Romania where she was trained in economics and international political economy. Her research interests include democratic consolidation, state capacity, political economy of developing countries and interest mobilization under different regime types.
Countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Moldova, Romania, Senegal

Marco Antonio Fernandez
Mexico

Marco Fernandez worked in the Mexican senate prior to grad school and was a guest lecturer at ITAM in Mexico City.  His dissertation focused on the political determinants of education spending and its allocation among the different education levels in Mexico. During 2008 he worked in the Policy Analysis Unit of the Mexican Presidency.
Email: marco.a.fernandez@duke.edu
Countries: Spain and Philippines

Kent Freeze
Canada

Kent comes from Alberta, Canada. He has substantive interests in Chinese politics and the political economy of developing countries.
Country: Canada

Kiril Kolev
Bulgaria

Kiril Kolev iis originally from Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in Economics from Whittier College in Whittier, CA. His research interests focus on the effect of multinational organizations on domestic politics. In this project, he is responsible for website design, data management and online support, in addition to being a country manager.
Countries: Australia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom

Dan Kselman
United States

Dan specializes in comparative politics and formal theoretic methodology. His dissertation addressed patterns of political party competition in Turkey and the broader Middle East.

Damon Palmer
United States

Damon Palmer is originally from New Mexico in the southwestern United States, but has had a peripatetic background, living at different points of his life in Bangladesh, California, London, and New York city. He is interested in the political economy of liberalization and globalization and in political parties and party systems.
Countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Jan Pierskalla
Germany

Jan’s fields of Interest include Comparative and International Political Economy and Methods.
Country: Mauritius

Sinziana Popa
Romania

Sinziana Popa received a M.A. in Economics at Duke University and a B.A. degree from the American University in Bulgaria. Her dissertation research analyzed national policies governing the operations of foreign companies in transition economies.
Email: Sinziana.Popa@duke.edu.
Countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, and Kenya.

Philipp Rehm
Germany

Philipp Rehm holds a Master’s degree from the University of Tuebingen in Germany. His research interests include political economy and political behavior. Philipp’s dissertation explored the determinants of social policy preference and the interaction of citizen preferences and social policy making.
Countries: Austria, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland.

Gustavo Rodriguez
Costa Rica

Gustavo was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica. He majored in Economics and worked in strategy and product development for two U.S. companies conducting business in Latin America before earning an MBA and an MA in International Relations at Yale University. In the last five years prior to coming to Duke, he was on Wall Street where he worked at the New York Stock Exchange in the International Department, developing sales pitches to non-U.S. companies that were seeking to “go public” on the world’s largest stock market. In this position, he worked primarily with Latin American corporations. These transactions led to a deeper interest in the joint politics of democratization and privatization in developing countries, as well as the mechanics of market-based reform and international trade agreements. Gustavo’s home region of Central America is undergoing just one such variety of commercial and political reorganization under the CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement).  At Duke he was a student of the comparative political economy of development and trade.

Arturas Rozenas
Lithuania

Arturas is interested in comparative politics and political methodology.
Countries: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Mattew Singer
United States

Matthew Singer (PhD, Duke) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. His work primarily focuses on electoral behavior and public opinion with an emphasis on questions of electoral accountability and economic voting. He has done fieldwork in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru and his work has been published in Electoral Studies, Comparative Political Studies, and the Development Policy Review.
Countries: Denmark and Norway, Latin America (supporting Juan Luna and David Altman).

Lenka Siroky
Czech Republic

Lenka is originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, where she was trained in political sociology. After that, she lived and studied in Budapest, Chicago and Boston before coming to Duke. She is interested in democratic consolidation in formerly communist countries. Her dissertation was about radical right parties and populism in Eastern Europe.
Website
Countries: Albania, Czech Rep., Israel, Mozambique, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine.

Yi-ting Wang
Taiwan

Yi-ting is from Taiwan. She is primarily interested in political participation and political culture.
Countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Taiwan.