Rachel M. McCleary is Senior Research Fellow, Taubman Center, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute.  She directs the Political Economy of Religion Project at the Taubman Center.  McCleary’s research focuses on how religion interacts with economic performance and the political and social behavior of individuals and institutions across societies.  She studies how religious beliefs and practices influence productivity, economic growth, and the maintenance of political institutions such as democracy.  Her work has appeared in numerous publications. She has written four books: Seeking Justice: Ethics and International Affairs (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the of End Violent Revolution (University Press of Florida, 1999-English; Artemis-Edinter 1999-Spanish), Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1939 (Oxford University Press, 2009 and winner of the 2010 AFP Skystone Ryan Research Prize), and the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2011).