Jennifer Larson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD in Political Science from Harvard University in 2012, and her BA in Mathematics and Political Science from Creighton University in 2006. Her research focuses on the social ties that connect people to each other and the roles they serve. She focuses also on the informational role that these ties play in social networks, specifically how people share information with each other. Jennifer’s research also spans geographic regions, as well as temporal. In her research, she combines network analysis and game theory to identify how the arrangement of ties in a network affects group outcomes like self-governance in various levels of governance.