Barbara Wejnert is a Professor of Political Sociology, Sustainability, and Gender at the Department of Environment and Sustainability, as well as a faculty member at the Jaeckel Center for Law, Democracy and Governance at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA. Her work focuses on democracy and the factors that impact its adoption, global diffusion, and democracy retreat, as well as the effects of democracy on countries' sustainable development and population well-being. In particular, she studies the impact of democratic politics on gender equity and gender-balanced policies as pathways to sustainable development across the US and internationally. She has further studied the multiple causes and differential outcomes of spreading democracy worldwide, as well as the effects of democracy’s growth and retreat on countries’ sustainable development efforts. Wejnert is the author or editor of several books and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including the American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Perspectives on Politics, which discuss democratizing processes and their consequences for social policies and countries' development. Her book "Diffusion of Democracy", published by Cambridge University Press in 2014, received multiple nominations for scholarly awards. Wejnert is also the recipient of the prestigious Arlene Kaplan Daniels Paper Award for her work on the effects of democratization on unequal outcomes of democracy on the well-being of women compared to men.