Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in comparative politics and political methodology. Substantively, my research primarily focuses on authoritarian politics. My first research agenda investigates the successes and failures of autocrats in using propaganda and (judicial) repression to maintain political control. In my second research agenda, I examine the political economy of authoritarianism. In addition to these areas, I study media capture and media bias in democracies. Methodologically, I am interested in text-as-data analysis. I also use econometrics, field and survey experiments, and computational methods in my research. My work has received generous support from the Institute for Humane Studies, the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, and the Global Studies Program at WashU, and has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science and Political Science Research and Methods, among other outlets.

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At WashU, I am a Graduate Research Fellow at the Weidenbaum Center and an affiliate of the Political Data Science Lab. Previously, I worked as a Research Assistant at New York University Abu Dhabi in 2021 and as an Editorial Assistant at the American Political Science Review from 2023 to 2024.

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You can follow me on Twitter @ruilinlai or email me at ruilin.lai@wustl.edu.