William Bacon

I’m William Bacon, a PhD researcher in Political Science at University College London, where I study how politicians switching parties can either fuel or defuse election violence in fragile democracies. My work sits at the intersection of data, politics, and human decision-making, unpacking how strategic choices by elites ripple into real consequences for voters’ safety and democratic stability.

Before my PhD, I earned my MSc in Security Studies and BA in Political Science (Honors), graduating with distinction from Pepperdine University. I’ve also studied in Spain, combining political research with language immersion and cross-cultural communication. My academic path has always been driven by one question: why do some democracies endure chaos and others adapt?

Outside of academia, I’m a fitness instructor and social media manager, roles that keep me grounded, creative, and connected. Teaching people to push past their limits in the studio reminds me that resilience isn’t just physical; it’s intellectual and emotional too. That same discipline drives my research, from running regression models in R to conducting interviews with local activists and politicians across Africa.

With roots across the US, UK, Switzerland, and Spain, I bring a global perspective to every project I take on. My long-term goal is to bridge academia and impact, transforming political research into something policymakers, journalists, and citizens can actually use to understand and prevent violence.

This Experiment.com project is the final push of my PhD: taking the ideas I’ve developed in London and testing them on the ground through fieldwork in Kenya. Every contribution helps me get closer to finishing this work, and to showing how fragile democracies can, with understanding and strategy, move from bullets to ballots.

October 2025