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Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? Implicit Theories, Attribution, and Costly Signaling in International Politics

Paola Solimena is the Postdoctoral Research Scholar in National Security and Intelligence at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. She studies international security, political psychology, and international relations theory, focusing on how states and state actors understand and communicate with each other. Solimena’s current research examines how individuals explain states’ actions and why their explanations differ. She investigates these questions using a combination of experimental and qualitative methods.

Before joining the Saltzman Institute, Solimena completed her DPhil (PhD) in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she was funded by University College and the UK Social and Economic Research Council. She also holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a BA in International Politics and History from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. Her doctoral thesis, Theories of Mind in International Relations: Why Individuals’ Inferences About States’ Motives Vary, jointly won the Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford. Solimena has taught a Ph.D.-level seminar on International Signaling and Communication (Columbia University, Political Science) and a section in the course Inside the Situation Room taught by Keren Yarhi-Milo and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Columbia, School of International and Public Affairs).