Jean Lachapelle completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Toronto in 2017. His current research examines the causes of state violence in authoritarian regimes, with regional expertise on the Middle East and North Africa. More broadly, Jean is interested in issues of repression, revolution, the relationship between violence and political order, as well as methods of causal inference in the social sciences. His first book project, entitled “Determinants of State Repression in Authoritarian Regimes,” focuses on Egypt (1981-2013) and theorizes the decision-calculus of authoritarian rulers to deploy repression, using interviews and an original dataset of protests and repressive events collected over the course of 16 months of research in Egypt. As a Weiser Center postdoctoral fellow, Jean will complete his book manuscript and work on related projects that test and expand its key arguments. In particular, he will conduct a cross-national study of Syria, Tunisia, Iraq, and Egypt since the mid-20th century that explains why these countries exhibit divergent patterns of state repression.
Education
- Ph.D., Political Science, University of Toronto, 2017
- M.A., Sociology, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2011
- M.S.c., Physics, McGill University, 2008
- B.S.c., Physics and Mathematics, McGill University, 2005
Awards and Honors
- Predoctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Middle East Initiative (2014-15)
- Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2010-13)
Following his WCED Fellowship, Professor Lachapelle accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at V-Dem Institute, at the University of Gothenburg.