Red Couch Talk with Alex Scacco

Alex Scacco is a Senior Research Fellow and Vice Director of the Institutions and Political Inequality unit at the WZB. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and previously worked as an Assistant Professor at New York University.

Alex's work focuses on the causes and consequences of individual decisions in conditions of extreme risk, where potential costs are high and benefits uncertain. Why, for example, do individuals choose to participate in communal violence, to migrate across the Sahara and the Mediterranean, or to trust outgroup members in contexts of recurring conflict? How does intergroup conflict affect political attitudes and social cohesion?

She addresses these questions using observational and experimental methods in a range of settings in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Her methodological interests focus on improving measurement in field-based research and knowledge aggregation in social science.

Her book, Anatomy of a Riot (forthcoming 2024, Cambridge University Press), draws on original survey and interview data to unpack the relationship between poverty, membership in neighborhood-level social networks and the decision to participate in a series of deadly religious riots in contemporary Nigeria.

Alex has done fieldwork in Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, and is currently a principal investigator in ongoing projects in Israel and Lebanon.