Evaluation & Research Associate
Dr. Melanie L. Phillips is a political scientist with over 8 years’ of experience researching gender, urbanization, and comparative politics in Africa. She has an extensive history conducting survey and experimental research for a multitude of projects including understanding the barriers to women in newer democracies, the role of financial resources and family backgrounds in politics, and the effects of identity and framings of social issues on policy support. As a Research and Evaluation Associate at STS, Phillips works as the technical lead, designing, implementing, and analyzing all components of research studies. Additionally, she works on capacity building work for program partners in quantitative research methods and statistical analysis.
Phillips’ academic research examines how women’s political representation in African countries is shaped by the intersection between the rules governing candidate selection and the norms associated with gendered family roles. She has used a combination of empirical methods in her work, including surveys, experiments, and in-depth fieldwork (Zambia and Malawi). Phillips has also taught undergraduate and graduate level courses on Women in Politics in Comparative Perspective, African Politics, Stata, R, Survey and Experimental Methods, and Geographic Information Systems Analysis.
She has been published by Oxford University Press, Routledge Press, in the American Political Science Review, and Party Politics. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Research Council of Norway, the Institute of International Studies (UC Berkeley), and the African Studies Center (UC Berkeley).
Phillips completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Master’s in political science from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Sociology from UC San Diego.