Jennifer Larson

Jennifer Larson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a faculty research affiliate with NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics. In 2012, she received her PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, after completing her BA in Mathematics and Political Science from Creighton University in 2006.

Larson’s research focuses on social networks, specifically the social ties that connect people to each other. In her research, she focuses on the role social networks play in information transfer. She also examines who is connected to whom, the effects on individual knowledge, and group coordination. This work spans geographical regions — from American western frontiers to rural Uganda — as well as temporal frames. 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.