Gemma Dipoppa is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University and a research affiliate with the NBER Political Economy and with EGAP. Her research examines contemporary challenges to states' capacity, focusing on organized crime, migration, and environmental enforcement.

Her papers and book project examine how criminal organizations expand into strong states, how they exploit migrant labor, and how this affects governance. She also studies the determinants of migrant labor exploitation and interventions that help migrants escape coercive working conditions.

Another crucial challenge states face is the management of illegal pollution and environmental degradation. Dipoppa focuses on the measures that states undertake to manage violations of environmental laws and the obstacles that hinder their ability to target polluters effectively.

Her work has been published in Nature, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, Journal of Industry, Competition, and Trade. Before joining Columbia, Dipoppa was a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, a Postdoc at Stanford, and an assistant professor at Brown University.