Ashley McIlvain Moran

Dr. Ashley McIlvain Moran is a Research Scientist and Lecturer in the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin where she is also Research Director in the Comparative Constitutions Project.

She is also a Member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change (GMACCC). on behalf of which she is a member of the Coordinating Group of the Project CASA: Climate and Security Action through Civil-Military Cooperation in Climate Related Emergencies. 

She is co-director of UT’s Embedded Scholars Program and co-director of an NSF-funded project on Concept Integration in Comparative Law. She is also a distinguished scholar at UT’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law and a board member with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). 

At the University of Texas, she previously directed the Strauss Center’s State Fragility Initiative and U.S. Department of Defense-funded program on Climate Change and African Political Stability, served as a core researcher on its DoD-funded program on Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia, and taught on security and development in fragile states at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She also led the Global Fragility and Climate Risks Study for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Overseas, she previously served as parliamentary advisor in Georgia for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), ran democratic reform programs and trainings in Azerbaijan and Iraq for NDI, and designed rule of law programs in Kyrgyzstan for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). 

She has served as a consultant for USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation and for UN Security Council member states. Her current teaching and research focus on democratic and constitutional development, divided societies, dynamics of state identity and legitimacy, and crisis risks from climate stress in fragile contexts.