Erica Edwards serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in addition to her role as Executive Director of the Center for European Studies and the European Union Center of Excellence there. She earned her PhD in Comparative Political Science from UNC Chapel Hill and her Master's degree in European Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. Before taking up her positions at UNC Chapel Hill, Edwards was a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria. Her academic background and appointments have positioned her at the intersection of Political Science research and European studies administration.

Edwards' research focuses on comparative politics, political parties and party systems, and the governance and politics of the European Union. She has played a pivotal role in the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), a prominent dataset on European party positions, contributing to its development and analysis. Key publications include 'Measuring Party Positions in Europe: The Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend File, 1999–2010,' co-authored with Ryan Bakker, Catherine de Vries, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, and Jan Rovny, published in Party Politics in 2015. This work has been highly influential in the field. Other significant contributions are 'Party Competition and European Integration in the East and West: Different Structure, Same Causality' (Comparative Political Studies, 2006, with Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe), 'Explaining the Salience of Anti-Elitism and Reducing Political Corruption for Political Parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data' (Research & Politics, 2017, with Jonathan Polk et al.), 'Taking Europe to Its Extremes: Extremist Parties and Public Euroscepticism' (Party Politics, 2009, with Catherine E. de Vries), and 'Who’s Cueing Whom? Mass-Elite Linkages and the Future of European Integration' (European Union Politics, 2007, with Marco R. Steenbergen and Catherine E. de Vries). Additionally, she co-authored on the reliability and validity of CHES in 'The Chapel Hill Expert Surveys of 2002 and 2006' (European Journal of Political Research, 2010). Through these scholarly outputs, Edwards has advanced understanding of party dynamics and European integration within Political Science.