Welcome!

I'm Laura Howells, a PhD Candidate in Politics at Princeton University.

My research focuses broadly on nation-building, political participation, and political psychology, particularly in states formerly occupied by the Soviet Union.

My dissertation project concerns the use of language and education policies to promote national identity, with Estonia's ongoing monolingual reform at the core. This project brings together causal identification with deep quantitative and qualitative description. Get in touch here for the working paper, research design, or simply to discuss the project in more detail.

I hold an M.A. from Princeton and a dual B.A. (summa cum laude) from Bowdoin College in Comparative Politics and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Prior to Princeton, I conducted research in Estonia on a Fulbright scholarship.