Jóhanna Birnir, Professor in the Department of Government and Politics, has been appointed as The Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy.

The professorship recognizes Professor Birnir as having a distinguished record of publishing and other activities, including extensive personal experience and involvement in civic education, public policy, and/or other domestic and international affairs. She has demonstrated a record of scholarship with strategies to attain greater economic equality and democratic participation. 

Professor Birnir examines how identity factors— ethnicity, religion, and gender—influence contentious political outcomes like elections and violence. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Andes, Southeast Europe, and Indonesia. Her research has been widely published in highly regarded outlets both within and outside of political science, including Cambridge, PNAS Nexus, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Peace Research, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Currently, her projects involve AI-assisted coding of data on minority groups globally for the Studies in Comparative Anti-Racism (SCAR) project, as well as investigating the representation of women in Indonesian politics, particularly how it is shaped by religion and ethnicity. In Indonesia, Professor Birnir collaborates with colleagues from universities and NGOs to develop local data science capacity. These partnerships aim to enhance locally administered data collection and foster research collaborations and exchanges between U.S. and Indonesian academics, students, and practitioners.