I am an Assistant Professor of Government at William & Mary where I also serve as a faculty affiliate of the Global Research Institute and the Data Science program. Additionally, I am a research affiliate of the Centre on Law and Social Transformations at the University of Bergen.

I study the politics of authoritarian regimes, specifically the legal and judicial instruments of power. My book project Undue Process examines these themes in the context of postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa and is forthcoming in the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society series at Cambridge University Press.

In other works, I examine the challenges of promoting access to equitable justice and the legacies of autocratic rule. As co-founder and co-director of the Digital Inclusion and Governance Lab, I draw on a variety of digital tools and data to analyze the political economy of development in the Global South.

My research has been published in World Politics and is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review. I have also received research support from the National Science Foundation, the Institute of International Studies, and the Global Research Institute.

I earned my PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and my BA in Economics from Vassar College. Previously, I was a Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.

Fiona Shen-Bayh
Assistant Professor of Government
William & Mary