The Department of Political Science welcomes Chelsea Estancona (PhD: University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2018), Katelyn Stauffer (Indiana University, 2018), and
Matthew Wilson (Pennsylvania State University, 2015) as new tenure-track faculty.
Chelsea Estancona, who joins us as an Assistant Professor this Fall, focuses on the
International Relations subfield. She seeks to explain how militant groups become
sidetracked by economic goals. She develops and tests the argument that although natural
resource access provides militant groups with much needed revenue, it can harm groups’
ability to achieve their political goals due to group fragmentation and delayed negotiation
with the state. Having spent the past few years in the 'other' Carolina, Dr. Estancona
looks forward to getting to know U of SC and Columbia.
Katelyn Stauffer will also join at the junior level this fall. Her research and teaching
interests are in American politics, Gender and Politics, and Political Methodology.
Using original survey data and experiments, Dr. Stauffer's research examines how the
inclusion of historically marginalized groups shapes American evaluations of political
institutions and their members, as well as the quality of representation they provide.
Her research has been published in Political Research Quarterly and the Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Politics.
In Spring 2019, Matthew Wilson will join us as an Assistant Professor specializing
in Comparative Politics and Political Methodology. His research focuses on understanding
the causal impacts of political institutions and temporal dynamics on political development.
His research includes studies examining how institutional differences affect dictators’
responses to terrorism, expropriation, and international conflict. Dr. Wilson has
published a number of articles in journals including American Journal of Political
Science, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies.
All three will teach at the undergraduate and graduate levels.