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Department of Political Science

Jennifer M. Larson

Associate Professor

Jennifer Larson received her Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 2012, and her B.A. in both mathematics and political science from Creighton University in 2006.  Her research explores how and why social networks affect political behavior in order to explain outcomes such as protests, civil conflict, and informal governance.  Her theoretical work uses game theory and agent-based models to isolate the importance of networks, while her empirical work focuses on collecting new data to understand how social networks spread information and motivate people to act in settings ranging from rural Uganda to urban France.

Representative publications

  • Larson, Jennifer M. and Janet I. Lewis. 2018. "Rumors, Kinship Networks, and Rebel Group Formation," International Organization 1-33. doi:10.1017/S0020818318000243
  • Larson, Jennifer M. 2017. "Why the West Became Wild: Informal Governance with Incomplete Networks," World Politics 69(4), p. 713-749.
  • Larson, Jennifer M. and Janet I. Lewis. 2017. "Ethnic Networks," American Journal of Political Science 61(2), p. 350-364.
  • Larson, Jennifer M. and James Bisbee. 2017. "Testing Social Science Network Theories with Online Network Data: An Evaluation of External Validity," American Political Science Review 111(3), p. 502-521.
  • Larson, Jennifer M. 2017. "Networks and Interethnic Cooperation," Journal of Politics 79(2), p. 546-559.
  • Larson, Jennifer M. 2016. "The Evolutionary Advantage of Limited Network Knowledge," Journal of Theoretical Biology p. 43-51. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.03.017.
  • View Curriculum Vitae