Jennifer McCoy is professor of political science at Georgia State University and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has been visiting researcher at CEU’s Democracy Institute and Institute for Advanced Studies. Dr. McCoy's areas of expertise include democratic resilience, democratic erosion and partisan polarization; crisis prevention and conflict resolution; democracy promotion and collective defense of democracy; election processes and international election observation; and Latin American Politics. McCoy’s current research program on Polarized Politics aims to identify the causes, consequences for democracy, and solutions to polarized societies around the world, including the United States. McCoy served as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program (1998-2015), leading projects on democratic strengthening, mediation and dialogue, and hemispheric cooperation. Her volumes include Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to  Democracy (2019) co-edited with Murat Somer, and International Mediation in Venezuela, with Francisco Diez (2012).