Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall, W423
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

dlaitin@stanford.edu
(650) 725-9556 (voice)
(650) 723-1808 (fax)

Research Interests
culture; ethnicity; nationalism; civil wars

David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, and Estonia. His latest book is Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad. He is currently working on a project in collaboration with James Fearon on civil wars in the past half-century. From that project, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" has appeared in the American Political Science Review. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.