Lauren McCarthy

My research focuses on the relationship between law and society in Russia, police and law enforcement institutions, citizen oversight, repressive and authoritarian law, and the issue of human trafficking.  My book, Trafficking Justice: How Russian Police Use New Laws, from Crime to Courtroom published by Cornell University Press (2015) explores how Russian law enforcement agencies have implemented laws on human trafficking, and was based on my dissertation which won the Edward S. Corwin Award (best dissertation in Public Law) from the American Political Science Association.  I am currently working on a second book project focusing on the legal suppression of wartime dissent in Russia, and another on grassroots civilian oversight and police accountability in Russia.

My articles have been published in a variety of journals and my research has been supported by the Fulbright Institute for International Education and fellowships at the Kennan Institute in Washington DC (2013) and the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki, Finland (2020).  I am also a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Institutions and Development, Higher School of Economics in Moscow and a member of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia).

I would be pleased to work with graduate students who are interested in any aspect of post-Soviet and Russian politics, comparative law, authoritarian law, human trafficking, or the police.

• McCarthy Receives Best Dissertation Award from APSA
• McCarthy Receives Kennan Institute Fellowship

“Beyond Corruption: An Assessment of Russian Law Enforcement’s Fight against Human Trafficking” Demokratizatsiya 18 (1): 1-27, Winter 2010

Book Review: Sarah Ashwin, ed. “Adapting to the New Russian Labour Market: Gender and Employment Strategy” Labor History 50 (3), 2009

“A Comparative Analysis of Russian and American Law Enforcement Practices on Human Trafficking,” in Beyond Tolerance: Human Trafficking and Slave Labor: Metamorphosis of an Old Crime and New Methods for Combating It. Pacific State Economic University, Vladivostok, Russia, 2008. (Published in Russian: “Sravnitel’nii analiz praktiki rossiiskikh i amerikanskikh pravookhranitel’nykh institutov v protivodeistvii torgovle liud’mi” in Vne tolerantnosti. Torgovlya liud’mi i rabskii trud: metamorfozy starykh prestuplenii i novye metody ikh preodoleniya)

• Introduction to Legal Studies
• Comparative Law and Society
• Russian Politics, Law and Society
• Human Trafficking
• Citizen's Police Academy