Elizabeth Zechmeister

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister is associate professor of political science and Director of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt University. Zechmeister is the author of over 20 peer-reviewed articles, and has published research on the socio-political consequences of earthquakes in Chile, El Salvador, and Haiti. She is co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Latin American Party Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her latest book, The Latin American Voter, is forthcoming with the University of Michigan Press. She has been awarded numerous research grants from external funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, and has significant experience working with USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, and others on projects involving survey-based research in the Americas. Zechmeister is an affiliate of the Research on Individuals, Politics, & Society lab and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Political Science and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and Political Behavior. She is an elected member of the planning committee for the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (2014-2018). Zechmeister has given dozens of invited talks and workshops on democracy survey research, natural disaster policy and consequences, and experiment-based research on public opinion and political behavior to government, academic, and other audiences across the Americas.