Jennifer McCoy

Jennifer McCoy, PhD, is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta and Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as Research Affiliate at CEU’s Democracy Institute in Budapest.  Her areas of expertise include democratic resilience, erosion and recovery; political polarization and depolarization; crisis prevention and conflict resolution; democracy promotion and collective defense of democracy; election processes and international election observation; and Latin American Politics. 

Dr. McCoy was named a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for her project, “Mitigating Pernicious Polarization through Innovative Civic Educational Interventions.” Her current book project is Depolarizing Politics and Remaking Democracy with Murat Somer, under contract with Princeton University Press. Her latest volume is Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy, co-edited with Murat Somer (2019).   

Dr. McCoy served as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program (1998-2015), leading projects on democratic strengthening, mediation and dialogue, and hemispheric cooperation.  She has authored or edited six books and dozens of articles.  McCoy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Women’s Forum and the Scholars Strategy Network.