Cleo O'Brien-Udry

@cobrienudry.bsky.social

2155 Followers 1213 Following

International political economy, development, and climate politics | Assistant professor @UIUC | she/her cobrienudry.github.io

Puppy looking out at the lake, regally
Announcement for talk: Dependency, Disruption, and Development: Rethinking the Consequences of Aid Withdrawal
patient in hospital bed with soup and a plushie kidney
chicago says: ICE OUT EVERYWHERE. Sun. 1.25 @ 1pm. Ida B Wells & Michigan Ave.
Assistant Professor in Political Behavior Department of Political Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a full-time tenure stream Assistant Professor position in Political Behavior, broadly defined. Candidates with research and teaching interests in comparative political behavior, comparative political psychology, or race, ethnicity, and politics are particularly encouraged to apply. Successful candidates are expected to teach courses in Political Behavior at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to establish and maintain an active and independent research program, and to provide service to the department, the university, the profession, and the people of Illinois in keeping with the university’s land-grant mission. Successful candidates should demonstrate evidence of creativity and effectiveness in teaching and scholarly research. In addition, successful candidates should demonstrate experience with fostering or the ability to foster an inclusive and collaborative teaching, learning, departmental, and research environment where all can thrive. Applicants are encouraged to include in their cover letter information about how they will further our commitment to the university’s values. Applicants at the Assistant Professor level must demonstrate evidence of a promising research agenda and a commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Ph.D. in Political Science or related field required. Candidates whose PhD may be delayed but will complete all the Ph.D. requirements within the first appointment year may be appointed at the rank of Instructor. After the Ph.D. requirement is met, the appointment will be changed to Assistant Professor. Target start date is August 16, 2026. The budgeted salary range for the position is $105,000 - $110,000 at the Assistant Professor level, for a 9-month service basis.
Belmont Harbor Dog Beach Clean Up BYO trash bags and gloves! Will try to bring extra but who knows Come with or without your dogs! Non-dog owners welcome! Saturday, July 12 9-11am
Sweet brown and white puppy in a field
Kitten yowling on a lap w/ laptop in background
We find evidence of domestic public backlash in three of four outcomes. Relative to a baseline of reading only the introductory text, respondents who read about a hypothetical misuse of gene-editing technology by American researchers exhibit significantly less support for patient access to gene therapies (⁠⁠) and public funding for gene-editing research (⁠⁠). They also have diminished perceptions of the safety and responsibility of scientific research (⁠⁠) in the United States. On average, the domestic controversy treatment shifts opinion on each of these outcomes by approximately 0.5 points. Contrary to expectations, respondents do not increase demand for strict regulations in reaction to domestic gene-editing scandals (⁠⁠). This null finding may reflect a ceiling effect, as even respondents in the control condition call for strict regulations in high numbers (see Online Appendix Figure A4). There is clear evidence that backlash is not limited by national jurisdiction. As in the domestic scenario, neither of the foreign scandals significantly affects attitudes about gene-editing regulation. However, support for public funding of gene-editing research significantly decreases in response to foreign controversies in the United Kingdom and China (⁠⁠). Respondents also reduce confidence in the responsibility of US scientists (⁠⁠) and support for gene therapies (⁠⁠) in the China condition. The UK controversy does not affect perceptions of safety but does decrease support for gene therapies (⁠⁠). Notably, the effects of domestic and foreign controversies are statistically indistinguishable across all four outcomes.
Table A1: Placebo Test: Employment Relocation of Mental Health and Eating Disorder Researchers: Linear model estimates for the volume of mental health and eating disorder researchers who relocate to institutions in another country. Column 2 includes the following controls (not shown): GDP origin country, GDP destination country, GDP per capita ori- gin country, GDP per capita destination country, Patent Applications origin country, Patent Applications destination country, R& D origin country, and R&D destination country. Stan- dard errors are clustered by country dyad. Statistical significance is denoted by: ∗p<0.1; ∗∗p<0.05; ∗∗∗p<0.01.
Table 1 reports the results of several linear models estimating the effect of regulatory difference on scientific relocation, before and after the CRISPR breakthrough. Standard errors are clustered by country dyad. Column 1 presents a baseline model with the Regulatory Difference measure, an indicator for 2012–present (CRISPR), and the interaction term. The positive and statistically significant coefficient for the CRISPR variable indicates a higher propensity for employment relocation after 2012. This suggests that the technological shock generally increased cross-border mobility of researchers. More importantly, the interaction term Regulatory Difference CRISPR is negative and significant, indicating that restrictive jurisdictions become substantially less attractive destinations after 2012. This result is consistent with enhanced flows of researchers into more permissive jurisdictions in the wake of the CRISPR breakthrough. Columns 2 and 3 find broadly similar results after adding the full set of covariates as well as dyad fixed effects.
Figure 2.National regulation of gene-editing technology. Thirty-nine countries are rated by the permissiveness of national gene-editing technology regulations. Ratings combine data from Isasi, Kleiderman, and Knoppers (2016), Araki and Ishii (2014), and Baylis et al. (2020). See "Regulatory Arbitrage" section for details on the coding and source data.
Figure 1 visualizes the two theoretical processes outlined above. The arbitrage mechanism, depicted on the left, is activated when a technological breakthrough occurs and countries diverge in how they regulate its application and development. This triggers forum shopping as research activity relocates to weakly regulated jurisdictions. On the right, the public backlash mechanism is activated when a controversy emerges over the use of the technology in a given country. We anticipate this will decrease public support for the technology in both the home jurisdiction as well as in other countries. The solid arrows in the figure indicate hypothesized causal relationships in each process which we formally test in the empirical section below.
Technological breakthroughs carry great promise but often escalate economic competition and heighten public anxiety, creating new challenges for governments. We argue that breakthroughs trigger two distinct mechanisms that reshape regulatory politics: (1) accelerated incentives for regulatory arbitrage and (2) the potential for controversies to spark international public backlash. First, technological advancement generates forum-shopping behavior as private actors race to develop the new technology. Researchers and firms may seek to evade national rules by relocating to more permissive jurisdictions. Second, public unease about new technologies creates the potential for backlash in the wake of controversial applications. This backlash can spill across borders: accidents or misuse in one jurisdiction undermine support for research and commercial development elsewhere. Together, these processes link the regulatory fate of states, undermining their ability to regulate in isolation. We test and find evidence for these mechanisms in the domain of gene editing, a field that has been transformed by the introduction of CRISPR technology in 2012. Our theory and findings shed new light on the regulatory politics of breakthrough technologies.
info graphic about timeline of service cuts
Conference Room 4J, 4 Chicago Hilton Matthew S. Winters Chair Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Naazneen Barma Participant Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Suparna Chaudhry Participant Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Kim Yi Dionne Participant Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Kelly Hunter Participant Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Hilary Matfess Participant Accepted Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Cleo O'Brien-Udry Participant Pending Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Haley J. Swedlund Participant Accepted Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Michael J. Tierney Participant Accepted Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis Mary Hartford Chair Withdrawn Roundtable on the U.S. Foreign Aid Crisis
Screenshot of map of farms/ports impacted by USAID shutdown
We invite submissions for the third annual meeting of the Political Economy of Aid and Development Society. The meeting will be hosted by Bernhard Reinsberg and Patrick Shea (University of Glasgow, International Political Economy & Development) and held 23-24 April 2025 at the Atholl Palace Hotel in Pitlochry, Scotland. The conference aims to bring together economists and political scientists to address issues of the political economy of development. Paper topics might include issues pertaining to the political economy of development assistance; issues of development and trade and/or investment; issues of bureaucratic organization from the perspective of state and non-state donor partners, host governments, and non-governmental organizations in host countries; issues of advanced/green technology commercialization and dissemination and development; or other relevant topics. Submission of Papers Both empirical and theoretical papers will be considered. Please submit full papers or extended abstracts to samuel.brazys@ucd.ie. The deadline for submission is 15 December 2024. We will make decisions by 15 January 2025. Special Issue After the conference, presenters are encouraged to submit their papers to the Journal of International Development to be considered for a special issue. Submission to the conference does not require submitting to the special issue. Conference Format, Attendance, and Registration The number of participants will be limited to roughly 30 to allow for in-depth discussion of each paper. Authors of accepted papers are expected to attend the entire conference. Thanks to generous support from UK Research & Innovation, there is no conference fee. Lunch and dinner will be provided on the days of the conference. Travel and accommodation (including breakfast) are at the expense of participants. Subject to budgetary confirmation, some support may be available, especially for early career researchers or researchers based at institutions in the Global South.
Supporting Women in International Political Economy Preliminary Schedule Friday, April 12, 2024
The one-day conference has three primary aims: 1) present innovative work on international political economy, 2) create opportunities for networking and feedback within and across levels of seniority, 3) provide space to articulate challenges (and strategies for addressing these challenges) particular to women (and non-binary) scholars working in IPE. By connecting women at different stages of their careers, the conference will help foster new connections and conversations about career advancement and opportunities in the field of IPE. The conference will feature panels of junior scholars with senior discussants, a roundtable on academic careers in IPE, and happy hour and dinner for informal conversations. Submissions: We are soliciting submissions on topics in international political economy from junior (defined as post-PhD, pre-tenure) women and non-binary scholars. Submissions may take the form of an extended abstract or full draft; preference will be given to full drafts.
First US experimental crop field at UIUC!
Supporting Women in International Political Economy Conference April 12, 2024 The one-day conference has three primary aims: 1) present innovative work on international political economy, 2) create opportunities for networking and feedback within and across levels of seniority, 3) provide space to articulate challenges (and strategies for addressing these challenges) particular to women (and non-binary) scholars working in IPE. By connecting women at different stages of their careers, the conference will help foster new connections and conversations about career advancement and opportunities in the field of IPE. The conference will feature panels of junior scholars with senior discussants, a roundtable on academic careers in IPE, and happy hour and dinner for informal conversations. Submissions: We are soliciting submissions on topics in international political economy from junior (defined as post-PhD, pre-tenure) women and non-binary scholars.
TV monitor with photo of Cleo and text "Villanova Department of Economics Seminar Series"