Heather Ba

University of Missouri - Truman School of Government and Public Affairs

Bio: My primary research explores the structure of the international political economy and how economic interdependencies contribution to the formation, evolution, and manifestations of national power. I have also researched and published on topics more broadly related to international relations and foreign policy. Finally, my post-doc opportunity led me to collaborate with an American politics scholar and we have jointly published some research related to federal appointments. A preoccupation with the causes and consequences of power, and a mild obsession with explaining socio-political phenomena in terms of the interaction between social structures and individual human agency are the two threads that weave together my various research projects. I think the greatest hope for accomplishing explanations of socio-political phenomena that shed light on the interaction between individual agency and social structure lies in the application of new and innovative quantitative methods of analysis, especially network analysis and text analysis. I employ such methods in my research.