Julie Anne Weaver is the Research Director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium. She received her PhD from Harvard’s Government Department (Political Science) and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Her research focuses on democratic quality and political accountability in the Global South. Prior to earning her PhD, she worked in the field of international development, with long-term in-country work in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on politics and governance programming, as well as managing research and communications for a DFID-funded South-South knowledge exchange program that aimed to make academic research about development accessible to policymakers and practitioners in the Global South. Dr. Weaver also holds a B.A. in Sociology from Barnard College and an M.A. in International Development and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).