Shelley Liu is a political scientist whose research lies at the intersection of political violence, development, and state-building. She has three strands of ongoing research, which explore: (1) how war shapes post-conflict politics and development both in the short term and long term; (2) how citizens perceive and respond to state-building projects—and how their perceptions affect the efficacies of these projects; and (3) the determinants of citizens’ trust, polarization, politicization, and disengagement from politics. Much of Liu’s work focuses regionally on Africa.