Alia Braley

Alia Braley is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the psychology behind democratic backsliding in the US and beyond as well as strategies of civil resistance in acute political conflict. She was previously the Director of Research at the Albert Einstein Institution, a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, and a consultant at the World Bank Development Data Group. She has also served as a research assistant at the UC Berkeley Violence and Intervention Lab and the United States Institute of Peace Nonviolent Action Program. She holds a Masters in Divinity from Harvard University, where her research focused on religion, politics, and conflict. She presented the findings of her thesis on civil resistance strategies against ISIS at TEDx Salem.