Our Team
Meet the researchers, scholars, and analysts advancing constitutional knowledge worldwide
Directors
Zachary Elkins
Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on issues of democracy, national identity, and institutional reform, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Designed by Diffusion: Constitutional Reform in Developing Democracies which examines the origins of democratic institutions in the developing world.
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Author of Judicial Review in New Democracies, which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association. He has served as an advisor to the Judicial Commission of Afghanistan, the parliament of Mongolia, and numerous law and constitutional reform committees.
Research Team
Ashley Moran
Research director and lecturer in UT Austin’s Department of Government. Her research focuses on comparative constitutional development, court elaboration of new constitutions, and divided societies. Distinguished scholar at UT’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Roy Gardner
Uses natural language processing and network science to develop methodologies for ontology development and topic discovery. Researcher at the PeaceRep consortium led by the University of Edinburgh Law School, and senior partner at Ontonomic consultancy.
Matt Martin
Primary research scientist specializing in public law and comparative politics. His research examines constitution-making processes, with particular emphasis on mechanisms of public consultation. Uses mixed methods including large-N analyses, natural language processing, and case studies.
Jessie Baugher
Jessie Baugher joined the CCP as a research assistant in 2008 and served as our Project Manager from 2011 through 2024. She continues to work with the CCP as a consultant. She holds a B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the Comparative Constitutions Project, she worked for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a national non-profit organization dedicated to protecting constitutional rights and liberties.
Andrés Cruz
Andrés Cruz is a PhD candidate at UT Austin’s Department of Government. He studies political methodology, including robustness and sensitivity in observational studies, survey methodology, and text-as-data. In the Comparative Constitute Project, he contributes to the analysis and visualization of large-scale text and network data.
Guillermo Pérez
Guillermo Perez is a Chilean lawyer and a PhD candidate at UT Austin’s Department of Government. He also serves as an Associate Editor at the Constitutional Studies Journal. Throughout his career, he has worked as a researcher and lecturer at various think tanks, research centers, and universities in Chile. His research interests include non-state actors, constitutional design, judicial politics, and Latin American politics.
Michael Werner
Michael Werner did his graduate work in Latin American history at the University of Chicago and taught Latin American, Mexican, and world history for many years. He also directed the Encyclopedia of Mexico, which Choice named “one of the outstanding academic books of the year.” He presently is based in Jerusalem, where his work explores connections and tensions among law, religion, and poetics. In addition to his scholarly work, his poetry has appeared in journals in the US, UK, and Israel.
Hazem Salem
Hazem Salem leads the Arabic Constitute initiative, overseeing translation and editorial processes for constitutional content in Arabic. His expertise ensures accurate and culturally appropriate presentation of constitutional materials for Arabic-speaking audiences.
We also gratefully acknowledge all of our board of advisors, partner organizations, and past staff members.