I study political communication, elections, and ethnic politics with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. My work combines extensive fieldwork with statistical methods and survey experiments to examine parties' campaign strategies, targeting decisions, and electoral appeals, and the effects these have on citizens' self-identification, trust in government, and support for democracy.

Much of my research to date has focused on political rhetoric and ethnic appeals, although I have also written on how rising electoral competitiveness transforms clientelism in Africa. My book manuscript examines how politicians reach across ethnic lines in Africa's highly diverse states.

More broadly, I am interested in the challenges and opportunities rising diversity presents to governance, institutions, and democracy worldwide. My work is motivated by a desire to better understand, and ultimately help to overcome, sources of polarization in plural societies.

Personal website: elenagadjanova.com

Biography:

Prior to joining the University of Exeter, I was a Departmental Lecturer at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, a Fung Global Fellow at the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

I hold a PhD in Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University.

Research supervision:

I welcome projects related to African politics, nationalism and ethnic politics, comparative democratization, and the role of social media in politics.