Jason Lyall is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Political Violence FieldLab at Yale University. He is also affiliated with Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. He is also a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network.

His research examines the effects and effectiveness of political violence in civil and conventional wars. On-going research projects are investigating (1) how violence and aid affect civilian attitudes and behavior in violent settings; (2) how ethnic inequality shapes the battlefield performance of conventional armies, including the propensity of soldiers to desert and defect; and (3) the role of airpower in modern wars. His research draws on diverse methods and languages, ranging from macrohistorical data and field, survey, and natural experiments to archival research and participant observation. He has conducted fieldwork in Russia and Afghanistan, where he served as the Technical Adviser for USAID’s Measuring the Impact of Stabilization Initiatives (MISTI) project during 2012-15.