Lauren M. Baker

I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska Omaha. I earned my PhD in political science at Northwestern University. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I unite comparative politics and international relations with environmental politics, Middle Eastern studies, and critical geography.

My research investigates the politics of garbage. In my book project, I show how authoritarian states seek to “sanitize” and depoliticize contentious issues like waste at sites of global environmental governance.

Before starting my PhD, I worked as the assistant director for the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) and as an associate editor for the Monkey Cage. I earned an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from The University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in International Studies from Allegheny College.

As an educator, I bring a holistic approach to teaching politics and guiding students to understand and analyze the complicated world around them. At Northwestern, I taught as instructor of record with Chicago Field Studies and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The Omaha region where I live and work is on the traditional treaty lands of the Omaha and Otoe-Missouria Tribal Nations. The area remains home to more than 170 tribes including the Tribe of Nebraska, the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska. Moving beyond land acknowledgements encompasses not only being aware of Indigenous past, present, and futures on the land but also supporting Native movements for sovereignty and self-determination.