Welcome. I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver. My primary research interests concern religion and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the role of Christianities in Southern and Eastern African politics. My book manuscript, Deus ex Machina? The Politics of New Religious Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers new theory to explain why Pentecostal Christianity has emerged as a highly politicized identity in some sub-Saharan states in recent decades but not others. I test this theory using both cross and sub-national data, which includes qualitative and quantitative databases that I compiled in Zambia (2011-2017). I have also conducted research on the political economy of development and social policy in cross-national perspective. For more detail, please see my C.V.

News

I am honored to serve my college as an At-Large CAHSS representative on Faculty Senate, starting this fall. If you're a faculty, staff or student in CAHSS with issues you'd like me to raise, don't hesitate to reach out! 

Publication in Political Behavior (May, 2022): Sperber, Elizabeth, O’Brien Kaaba, and Gwyneth McClendon. "Increasing Youth Political Engagement with Efficacy Not Obligation: Evidence from a Workshop-Based Experiment in Zambia." Political behavior (2022): 1-26.

Working paper on latest community-engaged study on youth civic engagement in Zambia here.

PhD, MPh, MA, Columbia University (2016)

• Recipient of Doria Award

BA, Brown University (2006)

• Highest Honors, recipient of Ida B. Wells Award

Lusaka, Zambia, 2013. Research assistant, Mr. Lungu, helps construct databases from government records. 

Rakai District, Uganda, 2010. Pictured here with research assistants on a predissertation study.

Partisan Evangelical Christian organization campaigns for incumbent Presidential candidate a month before Zambia's controversial 2016 election. Photo credit: Lusaka Times, 7/27/16.