About

Avital Livny is an Associate Professor of Political Science and a Lynn M. Martin Professorial Scholar in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She previously held a position as a Junior Research Fellow at the Carlos III-Juan March Institute in Madrid. Livny earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University and an M.Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford University. Her first book, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, is titled "Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World," which was recognized as a 2022 Best Book by the APSA Middle East and North Africa Section. Since 2018, she has been the principal investigator of an NSF-funded project focused on "Improving and Integrating Global Diversity Estimates Using Transparent Methods." She has held various fellowships, including Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Society at Chapman University during the 2019-2020 academic year, Linowes Faculty Fellow at the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research in 2016-2018, and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois in 2018-2019. Additionally, Livny directs the "Doing Diversity Science" summer research program through the Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Illinois.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Law
• Economics
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Political economy
• Epistemology
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Positive economics
• Aesthetics
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Don’t count me out: erasure of ethnicity and ethnic groups from national censuses

  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2026-02-09 · 6 citations

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• Introduction: Religion and Culture within Historical Political Economy

  Journal of Historical Political Economy · 2024-07-08

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  Historical political economy (HPE) is a growing field, sped along by advances in computational methods and data availability. These tools not only open up the past as a theoretical testbed for new and existing theories, but also allow scholars to reevaluate the past for its own sake. Meanwhile, inspired by contemporary events that highlight the importance of cultural values, social scientists are increasingly focused on religion, values, and beliefs as inputs and outputs of social, political, and economic processes. This special issue casts a spotlight on the intersection of these two trends; the articles we have assembled help make the case that the HPE of religion and culture is a rich area that rightly deserves more attention. Specifically, the articles demonstrate how, by attending to religion and culture, HPE stands to benefit when wrestling with at least three difficult sets of questions: how economic change translates into political change, which mechanisms link individual beliefs and values with institutional and organizational outcomes, and why states discriminate.

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• Replication Data for: "A Student-Centered Approach to the Undergraduate Research Experience"

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-04-09 · 1 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Student involvement in faculty research is on the rise because it serves at least three sets of interests: (1) students’ desire to build their résumés and develop close relationships with faculty; (2) faculty’s hope of getting research support from bright, attentive assistants; and (3) universities’ wish to publicize these opportunities to incoming student and faculty cohorts. At times, faculty may come to see their undergraduate researchers as a source of cheap but high-quality labor, forgetting that they are (also) students who are at the university to learn critical skills. Here, I make the case for a student-centered approach to the undergraduate research experience, which combines a traditional apprenticeship with a curriculum in the “what,” “why,” and “how” of research, while also expanding the program over multiple semesters, supporting a team of student apprentices. I argue that this approach meets more students’ goals, while also supporting faculty and university interests. I describe the multi-semester undergraduate research experience that I have developed and provide tools to faculty who wish to adapt this program to their home institutions. De-identified data and replication code for analysis of program participants' survey and achievement for participants and non-participants.

  PublisherDOI

• A Student-Centered, Expanded Approach to the Undergraduate Research Experience

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2023-06-13 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Student involvement in faculty research is on the rise because it serves at least three sets of interests: (1) students’ desire to build their résumés and develop close relationships with faculty members; (2) faculty members’ hope of getting research support from bright, attentive assistants; and (3) universities’ wish to publicize these opportunities to incoming student and faculty cohorts. At times, faculty members may come to see their undergraduate researchers as a source of inexpensive but high-quality labor, forgetting that they are students who are at the university to learn critical skills. In this article, I make the case for a student-centered approach to the undergraduate research experience (URE), which combines a traditional apprenticeship with a curriculum in the “what,” “why,” and “how” of research and expands the program over multiple semesters, supporting a team of student apprentices. I argue that this approach meets more of students’ goals while also supporting faculty and university interests. I describe the multi-semester URE that I have developed and provide tools to faculty members who want to adapt this program to their home institution.

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• Replication Data for "Can Religiosity be Sensed with Satellite Data?"

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-01-04

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication data for "Can Religiosity be Sensed with Satellite Data? An Assessment of Luminosity during Ramadan in Turkey," forthcoming in POQ

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• Survey Design, Order Effects, and Causal Mediation Analysis

  The Journal of Politics · 2021 · 43 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Psychology

  Causal mediation analysis requires measurement of an outcome variable (O) with and without treatment, plus a set of mediator variables (M) that constitute possible pathways for the treatment effect. There is no consensus on whether surveys should measure potentially mediating variables before or after the outcome variables—MO or OM. We use a replication exercise to demonstrate how the order of mediator and outcome items can be consequential for the results from causal mediation analysis. Order can affect mediation conclusions, even if the treatment effect is similar across designs. As such, randomizing order is usually prudent, although best practice depends on the researcher’s contextual knowledge about her particular application.

  PublisherDOI

• Can Religiosity be Sensed with Satellite Data? An Assessment of Luminosity during Ramadan in Turkey

  Public Opinion Quarterly · 2021 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Psychology

  Abstract Social scientists have long been interested in how religious beliefs and practices impact and are impacted by socio-political and economic processes. Most recently, scholarly attention has focused on the interplay between religiosity and local actors, events, and institutions. Until now, measures of religiosity have relied heavily on self-reports in surveys, but these cannot always be safely collected and tend to be costly. Even where available, survey-based measures may be too obtrusive and are rarely representative of sub-national units. Here, I propose an inexpensive method that uses satellite imagery to unobtrusively estimate religiosity across small geographic units. I hypothesize that night-lights are affected by the behavior of fasting Muslims during Ramadan, especially in places where daytime activities are otherwise unchanged (i.e., where there is no “day-night inversion”). I explore and confirm the validity of this measurement strategy in the Turkish case, using a series of high-quality surveys and electoral results, representing 973 administrative districts. I conclude with a discussion of the external validity of this method and an overview of the ethical concerns raised by the use of remote sensing to estimate religiosity, in the Muslim world and elsewhere.

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• Bibliography

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020-09-02

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  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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• Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World

  2020-09-03

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In much of the Muslim world, Islamic political and economic movements appear to have a comparative advantage. Relative to similar secular groups, they are better able to mobilize supporters and sustain their cooperation long-term. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Turkey, a historically secular country that has experienced a sharp rise in Islamic-based political and economic activity. Drawing on rich data sources and econometric methods, Avital Livny challenges existing explanations - such as personal faith - for the success of these movements. Instead, Livny shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity. This group-based trust serves as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in many Muslim-plurality countries. The book presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating Existing Theories of the Islamic Advantage

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020-09-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Observable implications of three existing theories of the Islamic advantage -- grievances, faith, information -- are tested using a variety of data sources. Contrary to the expectations of grievance theory, individuals in the Muslim world appear to be more dissatisfied and less apathetic. Moreover, participation rates are lowest among the most aggrieved, much as they are elsewhere in the world. In contrast to what the faith-based theory expects, participation rates are significantly lower among individuals with the strongest religious beliefs. Further, the popularity of Islamic-based political and economic movements does not appear to follow trends in religiosity in the aggregate, neither across space nor across time. Instead, support for these movements appears to come from both the religious and the secular, in Turkey and across the Muslim world. Finally, there is little evidence that voters in Muslim countries are uninformed, generally, or better informed about Islamic-based parties, in particular. The lack of support for the all three existing theories reopens the puzzle of Islamic-based movements yet again.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brian J. Gaines

  1 shared

• Stephen Chaudoin

  Harvard University

  1 shared

• Kerice Doten-Snitker

  1 shared

• Jared Rubin

  Chapman University

  1 shared

Labs

• Avital Livny LabPI

Education

• Ph.D. Political Science, Political Science

  Stanford University

  2016

• M.Sc. Comparative Politics Research Methods, Politics and International Relations

  University of Oxford

  2006

• M.Phil. Modern Middle Eastern Studies, Oriental Institute

  University of Oxford

  2005

• B.A., Political Science

  Washington University in Saint Louis

  2002

Awards & honors

• Larine Y. Cowan "Make a Difference" Award, Teaching & Mentor…
• Juan Linz Best Dissertation Award, Comparative Democratizati…
• Faculty Fellow, Center for Advanced Study, University of Ill…
• Linowes Faculty Fellow, Cline Center for Advanced Social Res…