Paula Ganga, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Duke Kunshan University

As a comparative political economy scholar, Paula Ganga uses her knowledge of advanced statistical methodologies, seven languages and travel to over 40 countries to examine the economic outcomes of political institutions, state-market interactions, the political actors driving the process and the inequalities between the winners and losers of this process. Ganga is particularly interested in populism and economic nationalism, inequality and economic development, energy and environmental policy, corruption and transparency, and democratic backsliding. At Duke Kunshan she teaches various courses in political economy, democracy and authoritarianism.

Ganga has published work on the economic consequences of illiberalism, foreign aid, Russian nationalization, corruption and energy politics in Eurasia. She is currently working on a book manuscript dealing with the political determinants of switches between privatization and nationalization in Eastern Europe and beyond. This research bears directly on how we view the link between democracy and market capitalism, economic consequences of populism, rising illiberalism in recent political transitions and state capitalism.

Ganga holds a bachelor of arts in political science from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, in her hometown of Iasi in Romania, as well as an M.Sc. in global governance and diplomacy from Oxford University, where she was a Chevening fellow. After completing her Ph.D. at Georgetown University she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, a postdoctoral fellow at the Skalny Center for Polish and Central Eastern European Studies with Rochester University and a George F. Kennan short-term scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.
More details can be found on Ganga’s personal website at www.paulaganga.com