Erica Dobbs

Erica Dobbs’ teaching and research focus on two spheres: political representation and social protection.

In her first book Transnational Social Protection: Social Welfare Across National Borders (Oxford University Press 2023), Dobbs and her co-authors Peggy Levitt, Ken Chih-Yan Sun and Ruxandra Paul, explore how people get access to social protection in a world on the move. As an affiliate of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University, she also co-authored articles on access to health care and other forms of social protection for immigrants.

Her current book project, Pathways to Participation, explores how and why native political actors create or maintain avenues to political participation for non-citizens in countries where immigration is a relatively new phenomenon. Related papers focus on immigrant political mobilization into electoral politics.

In addition to the department’s introductory course on comparative politics, Dobbs regularly teaches courses on comparative social policy, European politics, social movements, and democracy.