Sirianne Dahlum is a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) and an Associate Researcher the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem), University of Gothenburg. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Oslo and a MSc in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economic and Political Science (LSE). Previously she worked as a researcher at the project “Disentangling the Economic Effect of Democracy and Dictatorship” at the University of Oslo. She has also served as consultant for USAID, European Commision, B-Team and other international and national institutions. Before starting in academia, she worked for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry at the Embassy in Teheran and as a political journalist. Her research is published in top journalist such as British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, World Development and Journal of Conflict Resolution.