Associate Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs
ceweaver@austin.utexas.edu
(512) 232-7425

Kate Weaver is the Executive Director of Operations at IPD and Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She is also a distinguished scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security & Law. She previously served as Chair of the UT Graduate Assembly and as the LBJ School’s Associate Dean for Students, Associate Dean for Academics, and graduate advisor for the Ph.D. and MGPS programs. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and also formerly worked as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C..Dr. Weaver’s research examines transparency in international development aid, reforming global economic governance, and the politics of development data. She has developed methods to track and dynamically geomap aid and climate adaptation finance. Dr. Weaver is author of the award-winning Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform (Princeton University Press), and numerous articles and book chapters in outlets such as International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, Review of International Organizations, Ethics and International Affairs, Global Governance, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press. She is co-editor of Handbook of Global Economic Governance (with Manuela Moschella, Routledge) and International Political Economy and the Transatlantic Divide (with Nicola Phillips, Routledge).Dr. Weaver is currently completing a book manuscript that builds a theory of irrational exuberance and hype cycles in international development ideas, using an a 14-year case study of the international aid transparency movement. She is also the Faculty Research Director at IPD for two other research projects on Data4Development and Development Finance Institutions.In her spare time, Dr. Weaver serves on the Board of Advocates for the Baylor Collaborative on Hungry and Poverty. She also formerly on the Board of Directors of Bread for the World, and is currently collaborating with many NGOs in the aid transparency space, including Publish What You Fund. She is a voracious fiction reader, a daily NYT games completer, hiker, world traveler, and gourmet chef-wannabe.

Professor, Department of Government
dan.nielson@utexas.edu
(512) 232-7211
BAT 3.134

Daniel Nielson is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of Graduate Studies for the Government Department’s doctoral program. He is also Executive Director of Research at UT-Austin’s Innovations for Peace and Development. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Brigham Young University. In 2018 he was a visiting research fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. He is a co-founder and former Chief Social Scientist of AidData. He is also co-founder and former Director of the Global Politics Lab at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD in international affairs from the University of California – San Diego in 1997.

His research focuses on international development, foreign aid, the control of corruption, and international organization. He specializes in the use of transnational field experiments to learn about causal effects in political economy. He is co-author of Global Shell Games: Experiments in Transnational Relations, Crime, and Terrorism (Cambridge University Press 2014) and co-editor of Delegation and Agency in International Organizations (Cambridge 2006). He has also authored and co-authored articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Science Advances, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Strategic Management Journal, among other journals.

Professor of Government
The University of Texas at Austin
natemjensen@austin.utexas.edu
https://www.natemjensen.com/
Google Scholar Page

Dr. Nate Jensen is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas-Austin.  He earned his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 2003. Dr. Jensen is the Faculty Research Director for the IPD projects  on Renewable Energy and Sweetheart Tax Deals. He only speaks in the third person for the purposes of website bios and has a sardonic Twitter presence. He was previously an associate professor in the Department of International Business at George Washington University (2014-2016) and associate professor in the Political Science Department at Washington University in St. Louis (2002-2014). He teaches courses and conducts research on government economic development strategies, firm non-market strategies and business-government relations,  the politics of oil and natural resources, political risk in emerging markets, trade policy, and international institutions.  Not all at once.

Erwin Centennial Professor of Government
The University of Texas at Austin
mikefindley@austin.utexas.edu
https://www.michael-findley.com/
Google Scholar page

Dr. Mike Findley is the Erwin Centennial Professor of Government at UT Austin. He is also Professor (by courtesy) at the McCombs School of Business and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Dr. Findley co-founded IPD with Dr. Kate Weaver in 2013, and currently serves as the Faculty Research Directors for numerous IPD research projects, including Banking Bad, Boating Bad, Data4Peace, Policing and Urban Security, and Data4Defense.  In addition to his leadership at IPD, Dr. Findley is a Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar, a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, and a member of EGAP.

Findley conducts interdisciplinary research on political violence, international development, illicit finance, ethics, and methodology. He publishes in leading outlets including Cambridge University Press, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Annual Review of Political Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Penn Law Review, Public Choice, American Statistician, and Complexity. He currently conducts fieldwork in Colombia, Kenya, DRC, Sudan, South Sudan, South Africa, and Uganda.

Findley’s policy work includes collaborations with the World Bank, USAID, African Development Bank, UN FACTI, UNICEF, UN Peacebuilding Fund, UN Development Program, International Aid Transparency Initiative, and many aid recipient country governments. Findley is also co-founder and President of Evaluasi, a startup focused on improving the impact of corporate social responsibility.

Director of the Center for European Studies
Associate Professor of Instruction, Government

Dr. Michael W. Mosser is the Director of the Center for European Studies (CES), and an Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin with a joint appointment in the Department of Government, the Center for European Studies (CES), and the International Relations and Global Studies (IRG) program. He is a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and was the Executive Director of the Global Disinformation Lab (GDIL) from 2022 to 2024.

He teaches courses in European and international security, European environmental policy, comparative and European politics, international organizations, and foreign policy analysis. From 2018 to 2023, he was the inaugural faculty advisor for the University of Texas at Austin’s “Peace Corps Prep” program, and has also served as a faculty liaison to the US Department of State’s “Diplomacy Lab” program. He serves on various academic advisory bodies on campus, including as a member of the Environmental Justice (EJ) Faculty Learning Community, an Ambassador in the Experiential Learning Initiative (ELI) and a member of the non-traditional student (NTS) advisory board. He has won multiple awards for his teaching at UT-Austin, most notably being selected as a member of the 2021 “Texas Ten” by the Texas Exes, and the 2016 Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Fellowship.

Associate Professor of Instruction

Dr. Stephanie Seidel Holmsten is Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin with a joint appointment in the Government Department and International Relations and Global Studies (IRG) program. She is Associate Director of the IRG program and co-director of the Brumley Next Generation Scholars program. She teaches courses in global studies, international organizations, gender and ethnicity. She serves as director of the faculty learning community for Global Virtual Exchange, and has led study abroad programs in Santiago, Chile, and Paris, France. She also serves on the Provost Teaching Fellows steering committee and was chosen for the inaugural Aspiring Leaders Academy. She has won multiple awards for her teaching, most recently the Texas Blazers pillar award and the Orange Jacket tenet award. Results from her team-based learning classroom study were published in the Journal of Political Science Education in 2023. You can also hear her on The Other Side of Campus, showcasing the teaching and research interests of UT faculty.