Abby Post is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science.

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Abigail Post is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. Her research integrates theories from international relations and political psychology to better understand coercion, bargaining, and military escalation. She employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, with a particular emphasis on rigorous causal inference.

Her current book project examines how moral language transforms international bargaining. The project argues that moral language changes how leaders interpret threats and concessions, making peaceful dispute resolution more difficult and increasing the risk of escalation. The book builds on her award-winning dissertation, which received the 2019 John McCain Dissertation Award. Beyond this work, her research explores costly signaling and crisis bargaining, the psychology of coercion and military escalation, gender and foreign policy, and the use of laboratory and survey experiments to study political violence, public opinion, and the use of military force. Her research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, International Interactions, and International Studies Review.

Before joining Leiden University, Abby was a Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies Associate at the University of Pittsburgh. She previously held the Rosenwald Postdoctoral Fellowship in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College and was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the RAND Corporation. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Virginia in 2018, where she specialized in international security and research methodology.

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