Zachary Elkins is a professor in UT’s Government Department. His research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript, Steal this Constitution: The Drift and Mastery of Constitutional Design, which examines the design and diffusion of democratic institutions. Much of his research is on the origins and consequences of national constitutions. With Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website Constitute, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. Elkins earned his BA from Yale University, an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ashley Moran is research director for the Comparative Constitutions Project and a lecturer in UT Austin’s Government Department. Her research and teaching focus on comparative constitutional development, court elaboration of new constitutions, and divided societies. She is a distinguished scholar at UT’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law where she created the Center’s state fragility initiative and led its interdisciplinary research programs funded by the U.S. Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative and USAID Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. She previously worked in democratic, legal, and constitutional reform in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. She has an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a PhD from UT-Austin.