I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. Starting in Fall 2023, I will be an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University.

My research agenda focuses on repression and resistance in authoritarian regimes. I study how non-state actors affect regime repression, showing how social elites and ordinary citizens may constrain or enable the efforts of security institutions to eliminate popular threats to authoritarian rule. I apply these theories to regimes in Latin America, particularly the archival study of Cold War-era dictatorships, among other regimes.

Related areas of interest are how repression and political violence affects politics and public attitudes in the short and long term. I examine these effects across regime types, with particular attention to the effects of accountability measures for past repression and the effects of regimes’ efforts to build support for repression through framing and labeling of resistance.

My research has been published in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, and World Politics.

A link to my CV is here, and a link to research is here. I can be contacted at pearcee [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu.