Rod Alence

Rod Alence is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he has been based for twenty years. At Wits, he developed and coordinates a Master’s programme in computational social science. His research focuses on the political economy of development and democracy. He is currently involved in a multi-year, multi-country research project on election observation and peace-building in Africa, with colleagues from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa. He received an AB degree from Columbia University and MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. While doing his doctoral research, he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Ghana, and his thesis won the American Political Science Association’s annual award for best in the field of political economy.