School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-81 of 81 Results
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David D. Laitin
Emeritus Faculty, Academic Council, Political Science
BioDavid D. Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his BA from Swarthmore College, and then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia and Grenada, where he became national tennis champion in 1970. Back in the US, he received his Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley, working under the direction of Ernst Haas and Hanna Pitkin.
He has taught at three great universities: UCSD (1975-87), the University of Chicago (1987-1999) and now at Stanford. Over his career, as a student of comparative politics, he has conducted field research in Somalia, Yorubaland (Nigeria), Catalonia (Spain), Estonia, and France, all the time focusing on issues of language and religion, and how these cultural phenomena link nation to state. His books include Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience (1977), Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba (1986), Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (1992), Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (1998); Nations, States and Violence (2007); Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies (2016); and African Politics Since Independence (2019).
In collaboration with James Fearon, he has published several papers on ethnicity, ethnic cooperation, the sources of civil war, and on policies that work to settle civil wars. Laitin has also collaborated with Alan Krueger on international terrorism and with Eli Berman on suicide terrorism.
In 2008-2009, with support from the National Science Foundation, and with a visiting appointment at Sciences-Po Paris, Laitin conducted ethnographic, survey and experimental research on Muslim integration into France, seeking to assess the magnitude of religious discrimination and isolate the mechanisms that sustain it. In collaboration with Claire Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort, they published the results in Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian Heritage Societies (Harvard Press, 2016).
In 2016, Laitin became co-director of Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab, and has co-authored several papers published in "Science", "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" and "Nature Human Behavior" that estimate the effects of policy on immigrant integration.
Laitin has been a recipient of fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2021 Laitin was the recipient of the John Skytte Prize in Political Science from the Johan Skytte Foundation in Uppsala University, Sweden. -
Steeve Laquitaine
Affiliate, Psychology
BioPostdoctoral scientist in Computational Neuroscience. I study how biological and artificial neural networks integrate context with sensory information to shape decision-making, with a combination of psychophysics, high-dimensional analysis of fMRI and electrophysiology neural data, and data-constrained computational modeling.
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Paul Lendway
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioI am a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University, specializing in American politics and political economy. In May 2025, I graduated with a Ph.D. in Political Science (with departmental distinction) from Yale University. In 2026, I was selected to receive two awards from the American Political Science Association: the Distinguished Junior Scholar Award in Political Psychology and the Wildavsky Award for Best Dissertation in Religion and Politics. My research is published or accepted in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, American Politics Research, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Environmental Politics, Research & Politics, and the Yale Journal of International Affairs. Additionally, my co-authored research is conditionally accepted at the Journal of Politics.
The norms and rules that comprise American democracy are eroding. Why? What are the consequences of this trend? And what can be done to address this issue? My research program aims to address these questions. One stream of my research investigates how various forms of political communication (i.e., sermon rhetoric, populist appeals, etc.) shape political preferences. Another strand of my research probes the role of information (i.e., information about social movements, inequality, AI, etc.) in structuring public opinion and policy preferences. A final line of my research explores solutions to address the pressures of populism and mass polarization. This includes a project that tests Americans' willingness to compromise on a series of multi-dimensional policy tradeoffs (i.e., a conservative immigration policy and a liberal abortion policy, etc.). -
Josie Lepe
Facilities Specialist 2, Communication
Current Role at StanfordFacilities Specialist II
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Eva Lestant
Ph.D. Student in Economics, admitted Autumn 2021
BioI am a PhD Candidate in Economics at Stanford University, specializing in development economics and econometrics, with primary fieldwork in Côte d'Ivoire. My research focuses on market infrastructure, retailer cooperation, and entrepreneurship support programs in West Africa.
Before starting my PhD, I worked as a Research Manager for Prof. Pascaline Dupas and Prof. Marcel Fafchamps on the AUDRI Project. In 2018, I graduated from Master in Economics at ENSAE and Polytechnique, Paris, France. -
Alice Li
Lecturer, Communication
BioA visual storyteller with more than a decade of experience reporting from the front lines of American life, Alice Li now teaches multimedia journalism at Stanford University's Graduate Program in Journalism. As a senior video journalist at The Washington Post, she covered stories around the environment, climate change, civil unrest, immigration and national politics — work honored with a Pulitzer Prize, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards, Emmy Awards, Webby Awards, and others. Alice is also a part-time lecturer at UC Berkeley, where she teaches Aerial Videography for the Graduate School of Journalism. In her spare time, you can find her chasing after golden light in the mountains.
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Pablo Lopez Guardiola
Graduate Visiting Researcher Student, Communication
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research examines how generative AI and immersive technologies (virtual, augmented and mixed reality) transform education, human communication and public deliberation. At the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab I study Deliberative Polling in the Metaverse, and at UCAM I lead randomized studies on immersive learning in health sciences and the governed adoption of generative AI in higher education.
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Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Albert Ray Lang Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHer work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She has done ethnography on the streets of Chicago with homeless and psychotic women, and worked with people who hear voices in Chennai, Accra and the South Bay. She has also done fieldwork with evangelical Christians who seek to hear God speak back, with Zoroastrians who set out to create a more mystical faith, and with people who practice magic.
