Deborah Boucoyannis specializes in comparative politics, especially the theoretical and historical origins of liberalism and the state. She has also published in the history of political economy and in international relations theory. Her book, Kings as Judges: Power, Justice, and the Origins of Parliaments (Cambridge 2021), is the first systematic account of how judicial institutions (not war or trade) led to the emergence of representative institutions and state-formation in Western Europe. It received the Honorable Mention for APSA's European Politics and Society's Best Book Award and was shortlisted for the Gregory Luebbert Best Book Award. It is based on a dissertation that received the APSA Ernst Haas Best Dissertation Award in European Politics and the Seymour Martin Lipset Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Comparative Research. Her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, and other journals. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago.  She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, and prior to that, she was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and a Lecturer in the Committee on Social Studies at Harvard University, where she received multiple teaching awards.