Melissa Pavlik

Melissa Pavlik joins The Murphy Institute and the Department of Political Science as an Assistant Professor, effective July 2026. As a member of the Murphy Core Faculty, she contributes to interdisciplinary research and teaches courses in the Undergraduate Program in Political Economy.

Pavlik’s academic work addresses the political economy and geography of informality, the consequences of climate change adaptation, and the micro-dynamics of repression and political violence, particularly in West Africa. Her research frequently intersects with questions of causal inference and measurement, including the use of geospatial data and network analysis to address data missingness. Her recent work explores how states utilize uneven enforcement patterns to produce precarity among populations displaced by conflict and climate change, often facilitating exploitation by non-state actors. This research is informed by extensive fieldwork in Lagos, Nigeria.

Prior to joining Tulane, Pavlik received her PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 2026. Before her doctoral studies, she spent several years mapping and analyzing political violence for various NGOs, conflict observatories, and think tanks, most recently including the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Her analysis has been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, World Politics Review, and Foreign Policy.