Welcome! I am Heather Kopp, a 5th year political science Ph.D. candidate in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. My subfields are international relations and comparative politics. In 2019, I graduated from Truman State University with a B.S. in political science and history.

My research focuses on domestic determinants and consequences of interstate conflict and on political competition. Broadly, I have research interests in interstate and intrastate conflict processes, violent nonstate actors, voting behavior, public opinion and foreign policy, and party competition. My dissertation examines how perceptions of party issue ownership affect the severity of audience costs that incumbents incur as a result of international conflict.

Through my graduate training, I am also interested in polititcal methodology broadly along with practices focused on the empirical implications of theoretical models, models for categorical data, survival models, and time-series cross-sectional analyses.

Please browse my CV, research, and teaching pages for additional information about my experience and work, and feel free to contact me via email with questions.