Biography
In the 2025–2026 academic year, Valeria Umanets is an SLA Faculty Fellow in Tulane University’s Department of Political Science and a Newcomb Faculty Affiliate. Beginning in 2026, she will join Tulane as an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Prior to Tulane, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.
Her research examines women and politics, non-democratic political institutions, historical political economy, and post-Communist states. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford.
Her work draws on archival data, econometric analysis, elite interviews, and survey experiments, and has been published in Democratization and by Routledge.
Research Interests
Women’s political participation & representation, Communist & post-Communist states, Russian and Central Asian politics, historical political economy.
To learn more about Valeria Umanets, please visit her personal website.