Northern Illinois University
Department of Political Science
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Emphasis

• Comparative politics
• Social policy
• Service provision
• Electricity
• State building and citizenship
• Green energy transitions
• Africa
• Qualitative research methods
• Field research ethics

Overview of Scholarly Activity

Alesha Porisky is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science with a specialization in Comparative Politics. She is also a faculty associate at the Center for Nonprofit and NGO studies at NIU. She has three central research streams. The first centers on social policies, cash transfers, citizenship and state-building with a focus on East Africa. The second is a collaborative project that examines green energy transitions, electrification, and political participation in Africa. The third focuses on qualitative research methods and field research ethics.

Professor Porisky’s research has been published in the Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, Social Policy and Administration, PS: Political Science and Politics, among other outlets. Her book manuscript, The State at the Margins: The Politics of Cash Transfers in Rural Kenya and Tanzania, explores how the state provision of cash transfers in Kenya and Tanzania shape citizens’ perceptions of citizenship and access to the structures of the state.

Professor Porisky was a 2022 Research Fellow with the Program on Governance and Local Development at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She has also worked as a Researcher with the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Center at the University of Manchester, where she led research examining how subnational variations in state capacity and political competition impact the implementation of cash transfer programs in Kenya.

Professor Porisky teaches courses on comparative politics, African politics, gender and politics and research methods. She is particularly interested in supervising research projects related to social policy, service provision, citizenship, state-building, international development, green energy, and the political economy of development.

Selected Publications

• Glas, Aarie and Alesha Porisky. Forthcoming “Reflexive Research Through Others and Online.” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research.
• Porisky, Alesha and Lauren M. MacLean. 2025. “The Ethics of Compensation in Political Science Research.” Comparative Political Studies, 59(5): 1043-1082
• Gore, Christopher D., Lauren M. MacLean, Jennifer N. Brass, Elizabeth Baldwin, Winnie V. Mitullah and Alesha Porisky. 2025. “Distributional Justice and Rapid Green Energy Transitions: Citizen Experiences in Kenya.” Environmental Research Letters, 20(6).
• Porisky, Alesha. 2024. “Description as the Basis for Conceptualization and Inquiry: Studying Perceptions and Practices of Citizenship in Tanzania and Kenya.” International Politics.
• Porisky, Alesha and Tyson Juma Odoo. 2023. “Cash Transfers After Electoral Violence: Citizen-State Relations in Nakuru, Kenya.” Social Policy and Administration, 57(6): 883-901.
• Porisky, Alesha, Tahira Shariff Mohamed, and Patrick Mutinda Muthui. 2023. “Kenya’s ‘Universal’ Social Pension: The Politics of Registration in Marsabit County.” World Development, 164.
• Porisky, Alesha and Aarie Glas. 2022. “Insiders, Outsiders, and Credible Visitors in Elite Interviewing.” PS: Political Science and Politics, 56(1): 51-55.
• Alik-Lagrange, Arthur, Sarah K. Dreier, Milli Lake and Alesha Porisky. 2021. “Social Protection and State Society Relations in Environments of Low and Uneven State Capacity.” Annual Review of Political Science, 24: 151-174.
• Davidson, Adrienne, Matthew Lesch, Maxime Héroux-Legault, Tanya White, Alesha Porisky, Karol Czuba and Zain Asaf. (2017). "Advancing the Study of Political Cleavages through Experimentation: Revisiting Regionalism and Redistributive Preferences in Canada." Regional and Federal Studies, 27(2).