Adrienne LeBas (PhD, Columbia University) joined the Department of Government in the fall of 2009. Prior to joining AU, LeBas was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and Assistant Professor of Political Science and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research interests include social movements, democratization, and political violence. She is the author of the award-winning From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and articles in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, Comparative Politics, and elsewhere. LeBas also worked as a consultant for Human Rights Watch in Zimbabwe, where she lived from 2002 to 2003.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, LeBas was a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Her research has also been supported by grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Department for International Development (UK), the EGAP Metaketa program, and the John Fell Foundation. She is currently working on her second book, which investigates the reasons for persistent election violence in some democratizing countries, and she also continues her research on attitudes toward taxation in urban Nigeria.