Rachel Beatty Riedl

Rachel Beatty Riedl is the Einaudi Center's director and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor in the Department of Government.

Her research interests include institutional development in new democracies, local governance and decentralization policy, authoritarian regime legacies, and religion and politics, with a regional focus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research, and Director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. She has also been a visiting fellow at the Yale Program on Democracy, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. She was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Chair of the Democracy and Autocracy section of the American Political Science Association. Riedl is co-host of the podcast Ufahamu Africa, featuring weekly episodes of news highlights and interviews about life and politics on the African continent. PhD Princeton University.