Jeffrey Paller

Research Affiliates

Jeffrey Paller is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. His research examines the practice of democracy and accountability in urban African slums. He has conducted fieldwork in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. He was an Earth Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow and  a visiting lecturer of politics at Bates College where he taught courses on cities, slums and democracy; African politics and development; and democratization in the world. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. His research interests include African politics, sustainable urban development, democratic theory, and field research methods. His scholarship has been published by Polity and African Studies Review. He served as a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana, and has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin. Prior to graduate school, he received his B.A. from Northwestern University and served as a Program Coordinator for the Illinois Education Foundation.