Biography
Emily Rains is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. Prior to joining Tulane, she was an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University from 2021–2023.
Her research and teaching center on the politics of urban poverty and gender inequality in the Global South — especially India. Her research falls into three related areas:
- Explaining how urban poverty and informality shape political behavior.
- Explaining how gender inequality, especially how it intersects with urban poverty, produces disparate political behavior for men and women.
- Cutting across both, innovating data collection and methods to improve how scholars and policymakers understand and respond to these challenges.
She teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses focused on international development, urban poverty, gender and politics, comparative political behavior in the Global South, and research methods.
Her work is published or forthcoming in a variety of political science and development journals, such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, World Development, Journal of Peace Research, Political Behavior, Environment and Urbanization, and the Journal of Development Studies.
Rains received a dual Ph.D. in Political Science and Public Policy from Duke University in 2021. She also received a BA with Honors in Economics from Stanford University.
You can access her personal website.