Director Helen Milner is delighted to announce that the new cohort of Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG) Fellows, chosen from a large pool of applicants from all over the globe, will be in residence from July 2025 through June 2026 to pursue their own research projects and contribute to the intellectual life of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
NCGG Postdoctoral Fellows
Leopoldo Biffi is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations/Political Science at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland. He was previously a visiting fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University. Leopoldo's research interests include international institutions, international trade and investment, and the European Union. His ongoing work focuses on the institutional design of international trade and investment agreements, and on the politics of international treaty implementation. Leopoldo holds a B.A. in International Relations from King’s College London (Department of War Studies) and an M.A. in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute.
Niccolò Bonifai is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. His research focuses on how globalization reshapes the distribution of power among key actors in domestic politics, namely the state, labor, and capital. His book project examines why many multinational corporations appear silent toward protectionism today, despite the established view in political economy that multinationals benefit from open market policies and have outsized power over other interest groups to influence economic policy. His research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and International Studies Review. His work has also appeared in policy magazines such as Foreign Affairs. He is currently affiliated with the Lab for Globalization and Shared Prosperity. Niccolò graduated from Bocconi University with a BSc in International Economics and received an MSc in International Political Economy, with distinction, from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Doeun Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She received her M.A. in International Relations and B.A. in International Relations and International Cooperation and Development Studies from Seoul National University. She studies international political economy and political methodology. Specifically, her research examines how interest groups influence foreign economic policies. In her dissertation, she explores how foreign direct investments shape public attitudes toward foreign economic policies and globalization. Her solo-authored paper on the role of firms in foreign aid was recently published in International Interactions.
Dillon Laaker received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2024. He is currently an International Political Economy Fellow at the London School of Economics. Previously, he was a Global Political Economy Project Predoctoral Fellow at the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University. His research focuses on questions of trade and immigration, with a specific interest in international institutions, domestic politics, firm behavior, and public opinion. His work has been published in the Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science. In July 2026, he will join the Department of Government at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor.
Hannah Loeffler is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Technical University of Munich. Her research lies at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, examining how finance impacts democratic systems. Her dissertation challenges the conventional wisdom that global financial integration enhances market efficiency, arguing instead that individuals struggle to navigate the uncertainties of capital flows and investment returns. Using methods of causal inference, she investigates how these uncertainties shape political behavior, preferences, and policy responses. Hannah’s broader research interests include asset ownership, democratization and representation, green finance, and sovereign debt. Her research has been published in Political Science Research and Methods, where she received the journal’s 2024 Best Article Prize. Hannah has several years of experience in the financial sector, specializing in alternative investments.
Huimin Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on international organizations, international political economy, and the politics of emerging technologies. Specifically, her dissertation examines the global diffusion of policies aimed at regulating artificial intelligence (AI) and enforcement actions against Big Tech companies. Her work has been published in the Review of International Organizations and PNAS Nexus. She holds an M.A. in international relations from New York University and a B.A. in journalism from Northeastern University.
Hongyi She is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. Her research lies at the intersection of international political economy, comparative political economy, and public opinion. She is an empirical scholar, largely (but not exclusively) focusing on developing innovative experimental designs to target theoretically relevant quantities of interest. In her dissertation, which she plans to develop into a book project, she employs this experimental approach to advance scholarly understanding of the sources of public opposition to free trade policies.
Cartland Zhou is pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.S. in Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an international relations scholar and computational statistician, Cartland’s research focuses on developing novel theories and tools to better understand how constraints in the global arms supply influence modern international relations. Her dissertation explores the political economy of arms manufacturing and its implications for contemporary militarized conflicts. She earned her B.A. in International Relations from New York University.
Visiting Fellows
Quan Li is Professor of Political Science, a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, and Sara H. Lindsey Chair in the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He has published research on a wide range of topics including economic globalization (international trade, foreign direct investment, financial openness, and capital account liberalization), democratic governance, political violence (interstate military conflict, civil conflict, and transnational terrorism), environmental degradation, and research methodology. Professor Li’s research has appeared in numerous journals in political science, international relations, public policy, and international business. He is the author or a coauthor of four books, including Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System: Complex Transformations (2009, Cambridge University Press), Politics
and Foreign Direct Investment (2012, University of Michigan Press), Using R for Data Analysis in Social Sciences: A Research Project-Oriented Approach (2018, Oxford University Press), and Easy R: Access, Prepare, Visualize, and Explore Data, and Write Papers (2020, SAGE). His current
research projects include the U.S.-China relations, power in international relations, geopolitics and firm strategies and performance, and economic interdependence and conflict behaviors.
Erica Owen is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously, she was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University (2011-2018). She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Zurich and a post-doctoral research fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the politics and economics of trade, global production, and automation, with emphasis on the economic well-being and political influence of workers and firms. She has published in leading policy and political science journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Political Science Research Methods.