Lauren Baker

2024-2025 Cohort

Lauren Baker investigates the politics of garbage. Her dissertation explores how authoritarian states seek to “sanitize” and depoliticize contentious issues like waste at sites of global environmental governance.

She has conducted research in Morocco, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, spending a total of fourteen weeks collecting data over six research trips. Before starting her PhD, Lauren worked as the assistant director for the Project on Middle East Political Science and as an associate editor for the Money Cage.

Lauren earned an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in International Studies from Allegheny College. At Northwestern, she has taught as instructor of record with Chicago Field Studies and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, was a Searle Center Graduate Teaching Fellow, and a 2021-2022 Buffett Global Impacts Fellow.

Lauren received her PhD from Northwestern University and joined the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha in fall 2025 as Assistant Professor.

Read more about Lauren’s work at https://laurenmariebaker.com/.