Dr. Marika Landau Wells

Biography

Marika Landau-Wells is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in political psychology, focusing on how cognitive processes such as perception, attention, and memory affect political preferences and behavior. Her primary research project investigates the psychological and neural mechanisms behind threat perception and their influence on policy preferences, particularly in the context of national security decision-making. Landau-Wells holds an A.B. in Government from Harvard University, an M.Sc. in Global Politics from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining Berkeley, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, where she worked in the SaxeLab. Her research aims to bridge the gap between cognitive science and political science through experimental methodologies.

Research Interests

Experience