Minh D. Trinh

I am a political scientist studying the inner workings of durable authoritarian regimes. My primary research focuses on internal information politics within these regimes. For example, what happens to authoritarian governance when regime elites falsify internal government statistics to mislead regime leaders? Do autocrats know they are being lied to, and what have they done about it? Another strand of research looks at unfair elections in these regimes. Finally, I also study citizens' compliance with authoritarian rule and autocrats' tools to compel such compliance.

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​Beginning August 2025, I will be working at the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor of Government. Prior to Austin, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. And before that, I was a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.

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​I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. Before that, I obtained a B.A. in Government and an M.A. in Statistics from Harvard University. Originally from Vietnam, I am also a proud alumnus of St. Joseph's Institution International, Singapore.