Kirill Kazantcev

I am a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Rochester. For the 2024–2025 academic year, I am a Graduate Fellow at the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy. Before coming to Rochester, I earned an MA in Economics from Central European University in Vienna and a BA in Political Science from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Prior to graduate school, I worked as a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Governance, a think tank focused on evidence-based policy-making.

My research lies at the intersection of political economy and international relations. I study the political dynamics of conflict—why individuals choose to fight or withdraw, how states behave during war, and how citizens respond to violence. I primarily use experiments, along with quantitative analysis of observational data. I am particularly interested in developing innovative experimental designs to study political behavior, and in extending experimental methods to core questions in international relations.