Nina McMurry is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institutions and Political Inequality unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. She received her Ph.D. from the MIT Department of Political Science in September 2020. She studies accountability, representation, and state-building, with a focus on the relationship between non-state actors and formal state institutions. Her current book project examines the effects of granting collective self-determination rights to indigenous communities on identity, voting behavior, and state integration in the Philippines. Other research areas and interests include civic education, colonial legacies, effects of aid on governance and conflict, and the politics of state surveillance. In addition to the Philippines, she has conducted research in South Africa, Guatemala, South Sudan, and the United States.

Her research has been supported by Making All Voices Count, the Global Partnership for Social Accountability, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the Social Science Research Council, the MIT Center for International Studies, the MIT Political Methodology Lab, and MIT GOV/LAB, where she is also a research affiliate.

Before coming to MIT, she worked with Mercy Corps and Internews on democracy and governance programs in South Sudan. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.