Laia Balcells (Yale Ph.D., 2010) is Assistant Professor of Political Science. Her research explores the determinants of political violence and civil wars, warfare dynamics during conflict, and redistribution and conflict. She has recently published at the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, Politics & Society, and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. She has been recipient of the APSA Luebbert Prize for Best Article in Comparative Politics and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research grant. Before joining the political science department at Duke, she was a researcher at the Institute for Economic Analysis, CSIC (Barcelona) and affiliated professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).