Jeffrey Paller

I use ethnography, focus groups, and surveys to examine the political conditions under which democratic activity and accountability develop in urban communities, specifically in Africa.

I am a Researcher in the Department of Government at Uppsala University, Associate Professor of Politics at University of San Francisco, and a research associate with the Governance and Local Development Institute (GLD) at the University of Gothenburg. In 2022-23, I was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

I am the PI for the “Building Sustainable Neighborhoods in African Cities” project (Formas 2024-26), as well as co-leader for “Emerging Cities”, a Swedish Research Council-funded research environment that examines political change and local governance in secondary cities (2023-27). I am a Co-I on the “Political Transformation in African Cities (PACE)” project supported by the Research Council of Norway (2021-24).

My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin, and USF. I was a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana in 2012. I received my PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. During the academic year 2014-15, I was a Visiting Lecturer of Politics at Bates College. In 2016, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, working with the Center for Sustainable Urban Development. I curate the weekly news bulletin This Week in Africa.