Biography

Natasha Piano is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Core Faculty at the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies. Her research sits at the intersection of democratic theory, intellectual history, and political economy, with a focus on elite theory, realism, and Italian political thought. She is the author of Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science (Harvard University Press, 2025) and co-editor of Florentine Political Writings from Petrarch to Machiavelli (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). Her current research project, Schumpeter’s Dare, examines Joseph Schumpeter’s economic theory in relation to democratic legitimacy and political polarization. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.