I am a final-year doctoral student at the University of Oxford in the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), researching the interplay of welfare state institutions and the criminal legal system. My dissertation asks how citizens and policymakers consider tradeoffs between punishment, rehabilitation and social welfare, and how such priorities lead to cross-national and cross-temporal variation in state punitiveness. My broader research interests include comparative political economy, electoral systems and behaviour, inequality, race and ethnicity, and state capacity. My doctoral work has been supported by a DPIR Studentship and a grant from the Open Philanthropy Project.


From Fall 2021, I am also a Postgraduate Associate with the Leitner Program on Effective Democratic Governance at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Email: elizabeth.pfeffer[at]worc.ox.ac.uk           Twitter: @ellepfeffer