Aura Gonzalez is a PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Some of her research interests lie in the areas of development, electoral politics, identity, climate change, and migration. Her regional focus is on India. Aura began her doctoral studies in the Fall of 2021, where her primary subfield concentration is in comparative politics.

Prior to starting at Cornell, Aura worked as a research assistant at Columbia University and at the University of California, San Diego, where she assisted on projects addressing the political incorporation of internal migrants, ethnic conflict, institutions, tax policy, and identity mobilization in India and other ethnically divided democracies. She is an American Political Science Association Fall Diversity Fellow for 2021-2022. 

Aura received her BA in international studies: political science and music: violin performance from the University of California, San Diego in 2020, and earned AA degrees in physics, economics, and Japanese from San Diego Mesa College in 2017.