Welcome!

I'm Laura Howells, a PhD Candidate in Politics at Princeton University. I am a recipient of the Prize Fellowship in Social Sciences. 

My research focuses on the attitudinal and behavioral ramifications of nation- and state-building policy. My dissertation concerns how the state, majority, and minority individuals negotiate the process of nation-building. The project brings together design-based causal inference with quantitative and qualitative description and draws on extended fieldwork.  As part of this project, I was awarded the 2026 American Political Science Association Best Paper Award by the  Education Politics and Policy Section.

I am also a member of the NSF-funded Russia Watcher Project, where I write on issues of authoritarianism.  

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 and interned at The Moscow Times, one of Russia's few remaining independent news outlets.