I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Identity and Conflict Lab at Yale University and a Research Associate at the Center of the Politics of Development. I received my PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

In most of my research, I aim to understand what drives people to support and participate in violence and what the consequences of that participation are. I am especially interested in the role of formal and informal institutions and social inequalities in shaping these processes. My book project, Legal Militias: The Case of Convivir Groups in Colombia, examines the interplay between laws, civilian support for armed groups, and violence in the context of civil war. Across my broader research agenda, I study other forms of violence, including gender-based violence, support for political violence, and police violence.

My work has been published in Comparative Political Studies and is forthcoming in the Journal of Statistical Software. My research has been supported by the CEGA Development Economics Challenge, the John L. Simpson ABD Fellowship in International & Area Studies, and the Tinker Field Research Grant.

I am a mixed-methods scholar. I combine structured interviews, archival research, and fieldwork with the application and development of recent advances in political methodology.

I can be contacted via lily.medina@yale.edu.