As the new academic year begins, four new faculty members join HKS. Arriving in Cambridge from across the globe, these scholars bring versatile and unique backgrounds to their classrooms. Read their biographies below.
Lotem Bassan-Nygate
Assistant Professor of Public Policy
Professor Bassan-Nygate joins the Kennedy School from Princeton University, where she was a postdoctoral research associate
at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. A scholar of international relations with a focus on human rights, political psychology, and experimental research methods, Professor Bassan-Nygate is known for her work on the politics of “naming and shaming--the practice of criticizing governments’ human rights abuses. Her work is published in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Journal of Experimental Political Science , among others. Her doctoral dissertation, “Who is Watching? The Consequences of Foreign Criticism,” won the American Political Science Association’s 2024 Merze Tate Award, awarded annually for the best dissertation in politics, law, and international relations. Professor Bassan-Nygate earned a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where her dissertation also won the department’s award for best dissertation in international relations. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in international relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Wolfram Schlenker
Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System
Professor Schlenker joins HKS from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he was Professor and co-
director of the Center on Environmental Economics and Policy at Columbia University, and where he served as Vice Dean in 2021-22. Professor Schlenker studies the effect of weather and climate on agricultural production, how climate trends and the US biofuel mandate influences agricultural commodity prices, and how pollution impacts both agricultural yields and human morbidity. He has received a series of research grants from the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Agriculture. Since 2016, he has been a member of the Steering Committee for the Environment and Energy Economics Program for the National Bureau of Economic Research and on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science. Prior to moving to Columbia in 2005, Professor Schlenker taught at the University of California, San Diego from 2003 to 2005. Professor Schlenker holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics at University of California, Berkeley, an MS in Engineering and Management Science (Diplom in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen) from the University of Karlsruhe, an Master’s of Environmental Management from Duke University, and a BS in Engineering and Management Science from the University of Karlsruhe.
Roya Talibova
Sultain Qaboos bin Said of Oman Assistant Professor of International Relations
Professor Talibova joins HKS from Vanderbilt University, where she was Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Data
Science Institute. Her research and teaching focus on political violence and its long-run effects on political economy and development, with an emphasis on the broader Eurasian region. Professor Talibova’s dissertation examines combat motivation in authoritarian regimes, and the ways in which repression and ethnic identity interact with combat experience to motivate postwar rebellion. Professor Talibova’s 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. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, Institute for Social Research, Center for the Education of Women, and several other centers at the University of Michigan. Before joining Vanderbilt, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania's DevLab@Penn. Professor Talibova holds a PhD from the Departments of Political Science and Scientific Computing and a dual MS in Statistics 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 from the Azerbaijan University of Foreign Languages.
Dustin Tingley
Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy
Professor Tingley is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Government
Department at Harvard University. Professor Tingley is also Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. His research has spanned international relations, international political economy, climate change, causal inference, data science/machine learning, and digital education, with a recent focus on the political economy of climate change and energy transitions. His newest book with Alex Gazmararian, Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse , was published with Cambridge University Press and has won several awards including the 2024 Don K. Price Award for best book on science, technology, and politics. The book features the voices of those on the front lines of the energy transition—a commissioner in Carbon County deciding whether to welcome wind, executives at energy companies searching for solutions, mayors and unions in Minnesota battling for local jobs, and fairgoers in coal country navigating their community's uncertain future. His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water's Edge, was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy. Professor Tingley received a PhD in Politics from Princeton University and BA from the University of Rochester (political science and math).
