Center Names Three New Postdoctoral Research Scholars
The Center for Political Economy has selected three new Postdoctoral Research Scholars for 2026-2027 and named two from last year who will be funded for another year.
The Center for Political Economy has selected three new Postdoctoral Research Scholars for 2026-2027 and named two from last year who will be funded for another year.
The Center welcomed the new research scholars this summer: Ella Bayi, Kiara Hernández, and Timothy Meyer. They will join existing scholars Luis Jaramillo and Jacob Swanson. Each scholar is assigned to one of the Center’s five Idea Labs: Firms and Industrial Policy, International Political Economy, Money and Finance, Political Economy of Climate, and Work and Labor.
Learn more about the scholars below.
The Center’s Postdoctoral Research Scholar program is intended to provide early-career scholars with time to undertake research and/or writing for projects that will make substantial and original contributions to the understanding of political economy. This year, each lab has two postdoctoral fellows whose time is divided between their own research and the lab’s explorations and activities.
Ella Bayi, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Climate Lab Idea Lab
Research Summary: Ella Bayi received her PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. Her research sits at the intersection of comparative politics, political economy, and environmental governance, with a focus on the politics of environmental enforcement in Latin America. Her book project, “Beyond the Trees: The Politics of Deforestation Enforcement,” examines state enforcement capacity in the Amazon across Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, drawing on original cross-national data and extensive fieldwork. During her PhD, she studied how interest groups weaken or strengthen environmental agencies and the consequences on deforestation rates and protected areas. Please visit her website for more information on her research.
Kiara Hernández, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Work and Labor Idea Lab
Research Summary: Kiara is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Work and Labor Idea Lab at Columbia University. Her research sits at the intersection of political behavior and political economy, asking how large-scale economic and demographic change shapes politics in the United States. Her main research line examines this through labor politics, investigating the behavioral and institutional determinants of collective action and their consequences for political mobilization and redistributive politics. During the postdoc, she will further develop projects on non-union protected concerted activity and on the electoral effects of localized exposure to labor conflict, such as prolonged healthcare strikes. She received her PhD in government from Harvard University in 2026. Please visit her website for more information on her research.
Timothy Meyer, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, International Political Economy Lab
Research Summary: Timothy is an economist working on international economics, macrofinance, and political economy. His research examines the links between international economic relationships and geopolitical power. In the International Political Economy Lab, Timothy will further develop his research on geoeconomics. His current work studies economic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Other projects examine the distributional consequences of asset-price fluctuations and the effects of war on inequality. Timothy received his PhD in economics from the University of Bonn and was a researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. After the postdoctoral fellowship, he will join the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor of finance. Please visit his website for further information.
Luis Jaramillo, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Firms and Industrial Policy Idea Lab
Research Summary: Luis studies how trade and industrial policy shapes productive development in developing countries, East Asia and Latin America in particular. He will use the fellowship to complete two research projects. In the first one, he studies how South Korea’s first “mission-oriented” R&D program shaped innovation and real outcomes after its implementation between 1992 and 2001. Unlike most work in this area, the setting features a large, government-directed R&D funding shock akin to the United States’ CHIPS and Science Act. In the second one, which is joint work with Melissa Dell and Pablo Querubín, he studies when and how trade barriers either foster or hinder long-term economic development. He does so through a comparative analysis of trade policy and 20th century development in Mexico, Taiwan, and mainland China. Looking to shed light on how political economy shapes infant industry protection, the project exploits that while in Mexico the single party state deeply entwined with economic interests, most mainland industrialists moved to Hong Kong and severed ties with the KMT after its retreat to Taiwan, likely removing pressure to skew trade protection towards existing industries.
Jacob Swanson, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Money and Finance Idea Lab
Research Summary: Jacob Swanson received his PhD in Government from Cornell University. A political theorist, his research focuses on political economy, democracy, and social theory. At the Center for Political Economy (Money and Finance Lab), he will primarily be working on completing his book, "Made By Money: Politics, Economics, and the Self in Capitalist Modernity," which explores how money shapes the modern economic self, markets, and democratic life. His previous work has appeared in Political Theory, Daedalus, Perspectives on Politics, and the UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review.