Agnieszka Paczynska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Associate Faculty at the Center for Global Studies, George Mason University. She has been a research fellow in the Sociology Department of the Warsaw School of Economics and at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the American University in Cairo. She has also worked as the Managing Editor of The Bulletin of Regional Cooperation in the Middle East published by Search for Common Ground and has served on election observing missions to Ethiopia and Liberia.

She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a MA and BA in political science from New York University, New York City. She has also studied Arabic at the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad at the American University in Cairo and at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Her research interests include the relationship between economic and political change and conflict, the relationship between globalization processes and local conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction policies. She has published articles on structural adjustment policies, democratization, and development and security. She is the author of a forthcoming book, Labor, State, and The Transition to a Market Economy: Egypt, Poland, Mexico and the Czech Republic. She is currently working on her second book, Rebuilding Society, Downsizing the State: Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction Policies, which examines the relationship between peace-building and economic policies after civil wars.