Alice McCarthy

Alice McCarthy is an A.B. candidate at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, with a minor in History and the Practice of Diplomacy. Her senior thesis examines healthcare reconstruction in post-Assad Syria, with a focus on rebuilding Syria's medical workforce. She leads operations for the Network for Syrian Legislative Studies' Princeton chapter, working with partner chapters at Harvard and Georgetown.

She has been a Contributing Author at the Stimson Center, working on its 2026 Future of International Cooperation report, "Redefining Global Trust," and a Steering Committee member at the Coalition for the UN We Need (C4UN), where she served as liaison to Permanent Missions and helped organise the United Nations Global Futures Forum 2026. On campus she has worked as a Research Assistant at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, coding incident-level data from international media across conflict zones in the Middle East for the Denial in Rebellion Dataset (DRD), which tracks how armed groups use public denial to contest accusations and shape legitimacy narratives.

She previously interned at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm, contributing to the Global Election Monitor report and to policy advisory work on referendum design and elections as critical infrastructure.

Alice is also President of Policy Punchline, a Princeton student-run podcast that interviews policymakers, economists, and scholars on the ideas shaping public policy. Outside of her academic and research work, she rows for Princeton's varsity women's team and serves as Head Coach for Special Olympics New Jersey, leading weekly sports programmes for adults with intellectual disabilities.