Biography

Isabel M. Perera an Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. Her research explores how politics shape the social policies, labor markets, and overall economies of affluent democracies, focusing on the United States and Western Europe.

As a 2023-2024 Max Weber Fellow, she is completing a book project -- provisionally titled The Welfare Workforce -- that shows how public sector trade unions shape the welfare state. She demonstrates this relationship by examining the political economy of mental health care, with cross-national statistics and comparative-historical analyses of the American, French, Swedish, and Norwegian cases.

She holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University.