Julia Gray is an associate professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Lauder Institute, with a secondary appointment at Wharton’s Business Ethics and Legal Studies department) at the University of Pennsylvania, where she specializes in international organizations and international political economy. Her research centers on international economic relations and economic organizations in emerging markets.

Specifically, she focuses on international organizations and reputations, and on how and whether states and bureaucracies in international agreements implement their mandates. She also studies how institutions change in emerging markets. Her book The Company States Keep: International Economic Organizations and Investor Perceptions in Emerging Markets received the 2013 Lepgold Book Prize for the best book published in international relations. She is currently working on a book manuscript on survival and adaptation in international economic organizations over time, and the inefficiencies and pathologies that can emerge in these organizations. Sample chapters can be found here.

She is currently a visiting fellow at the Global Governance program at the European University Institute. For 2020-2021, Professor Gray was on sabbatical as a Jean Monnet fellow at the Robert Schuman Center at the European University Institute. She has previously been a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC; and Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. Prior to her academic career, she spent five years working in journalism and in the nonprofit sector in Prague and in Budapest.  

Download a recent cv here.

Google scholar page here.