Biography

Erin Lin (PhD, Princeton) uses a multidisciplinary approach to study key questions in comparative politics and international security. Her research topics include legacies of war, economic development, agriculture, and genocide. She also has a deep interest in the relationship between soil conditions and unexploded bombs, which she currently investigates in Cambodia. Her work incorporates ethnographic and econometric techniques, combining immersive fieldwork with large-N, archival datasets.    

Her book When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia documents how undetonated bombs from the Vietnam War still affect Cambodian farmers and their land.  In 2021, Lin was elected to the Board of Trustees at Mines Advisory Group, a humanitarian organization dedicated to the removal of unexploded bombs and landmines. In 2022, she was named a Young Investigator by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which awards half-million dollar grants to early career scientists who show exceptional promise for conducting research of military interest.