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Biography
Nadia is an Associate Professor in United States Studies at the Institute of the Americas and holds a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Originally from Virginia, she completed her undergraduate studies in Comparative Literature (Spanish) at the University of Chicago and, later, in Philosophy at the University of Paris IV – Sorbonne. In her postgraduate work at the University of Oxford, she focused on both comparative politics (MPhil) and US politics (DPhil), completing her studies in 2015. Most recently, she has held post-doctoral positions at Balliol College, Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow, and at City, University of London as a Post-doctoral Research Associate. Nadia has also worked as a consultant for various research organizations, including UNESCO and the OECD
Research Summary
Broadly speaking, Nadia is interested in democratic communities: how they form, what sustains them, how they disintegrate. Her current project explores the idea of political fraternity and friendship in American Political Thought and, in particular, in the work of Wilson Carey McWilliams. Past research focused on the themes of accountability and state building in the American political development (APD) tradition. Parallel to this, her previous work explored comparative immigration and immigrant integration policies in Western Europe and North America; theoretical models of institutional change; the history of transparency in the US; and accountability following economic crisis.
Teaching Summary
Undergraduate:
AMER0039 Introduction to Politics
AMER0048 Politics of the United States
AMER0058 American Political Thought
Post Graduate Taught:
AMER0044 American Political Development
Research Supervision:
I welcome research proposals from prospective postgraduate students working on topics related to any area of my current and previous research, including fraternity, public accountability, crisis and emergency governance, immigration, and state building in the US context.
Current supervision:
Josephine Harmon, “US Gun Politics and Libertarians: The Conservative Coalition and the Role of Libertarian Thinktanks and Advocates in the Formation of Gun Policy in the 1990s and 2000s” (second supervisor)
Mallory Horrill, 'Victorian Image of Canada: English Gentlewomen and their Perceptions of Canada, 1830-1900' (second supervisor)
Yifei Li, ''A carefully constructed unintended consequence: Development of Medicare as a patchwork system, 1965-1997'' (second supervisor).
Matthew Schlachter, 'The Role of Moderates in the US Republican Party, 1980 to the Present Day' (primary supervisor)
Midou Tian, 'Promoting Peace? US Soft Power Towards China, 1989-2016' (second supervisor)
Past PhD supervision:
Agisilaos Papageorgiou, 'Interventionism and Ideology: Greco-American Relations from 1947 to 1974 and their Historical Memory' (second supervisor)
Emily Hull, “Irving Kristol: Cold War Liberal and Conservative” (second supervisor, funded by Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship).
Publications
Books
- The Accountability State: U.S. Federal Inspectors General and the Pursuit of Democratic Integrity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017)
Articles
- Hilliard, Nadia. (Forthcoming, 2023). ‘The Truth of Fiction: Robert Lowell’s Imitations and the Logic of Translation’. Bishop-Lowell Studies 3, 53-79.
- Hilliard, Nadia. (2022). ‘Accountability Regimes, Partisanship, and Midterm Mandates: Midterms in Contemporary America’. In Patrick Andelic, Mark McLay, and Robert Mason (Eds), Midterms and Mandates: Electoral Reassessments of Presidents and Parties since FDR. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Hilliard, Nadia. (2021). Book Review: US Inspectors General: Truth Tellers in Turbulent Times. The American Review of Public Administration 51(1), 72-73.
- Hilliard, Nadia, Iosif Kovras, and Neophytos Loizides. (2021). ‘The Perils of Accountability After Crisis: Ambiguities, Policy Legacies, and Value Trade-offs’. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34(1), 85-104.
- Hilliard, Nadia. (2018). ‘Monitoring the U.S. Executive Branch Inside and Out: The Freedom of Information Act, Inspectors General, and the Paradoxes of Transparency’, in David Pozen and Michael Schudson, eds., Troubling Transparency: The Freedom of Information Act and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press.
Selected media appearances
- The Globalist, Monocle. Episode 2888: Latest developments in FBI raid at Donald Trump's Florida residence. | 21 September 2022
- UCL Constitution Unit Blog. The 2020 US Elections: Nine Lessons. | 17 December 2020
- The Conversation. US Election: Why Democratic Legitimacy Remains at Stake. | 4 November 2020
- Nadia Hilliard's US election article in The Conversation cited by The Washington Post. Read the article in The Washington Post by Ishaan Tharoor | November 11, 2020
- The Monkey Cage, Washington Post. Here’s What You Need to Know about Inspectors General. | 18 June 2018
- MindPop podcast. Episode 37: Truth and Post-truth. | 15 November 2017
More staff media appearances here.
