MPSA Council

Jennifer L. Merolla is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside, and serves as Director of the Identity and Politics Lab. She was previously Chair of the Department of Political Science (2021-2024) and a field editor for the Journal of Politics (2015-2019). Merolla’s research focuses on how the political environment shapes individual attitudes and behavior across many domains such as candidate evaluations during elections, immigration policy attitudes, foreign policy attitudes, and support for democratic values and institutions. She is co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public (University of Chicago Press 2009), Framing Immigrants: News Coverage, Public Opinion and Policy (Russell Sage Foundation 2016), and Change and Continuity in the 2020 and 2022 Elections (Rowman & Littlefield 2023). Merolla’s work has appeared in various journals, and her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Time Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences. She received a PhD in political science from Duke University, and a BA from Boston College.

Bethany Lacina is an associate professor at the University of Rochester Department of Political Science. Her research interests are migration, conflict and ethnic identities. Her forthcoming book, Strangers and Settlers, compares international and domestic anti-migration movements.

Ted Brader is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, where he is also a Research Professor in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. From 2014 to 2022, he served as a Principal Investigator of the American National Election Studies. He also has served as an associate principal investigator for Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) since 2009. His research examines how public opinion and political behavior are shaped by emotions, partisanship, social identities, group attitudes, and media messaging; he also studies survey and experimental methods. Current projects focus on debates over immigration, claims of religious freedom, the perspectives of rural Americans, and partisan stereotyping. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and of Campaigning for Hearts and Minds (Chicago 2006), which has received awards for its lasting impact in the fields of political communication (2015) and elections, public opinion, and voting behavior (2022). He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Rikhil R. Bhavnani is Professor and the Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Chair at the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the political economy of development and migration, and on inequalities in political representation, mainly in South Asia. Bhavnani's research has been published in various journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. He is the co-author, with Bethany Lacina, of a Cambridge University Press book on the backlash against within-country migration across the developing world. Bhavnani is a Faculty Affiliate at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Data Science Institute, the Elections Research Center, and the Center for South Asia--which he previously directed. He previously served as the Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Political Science.

Dr. Berinsky is a leading scholar of American politics and political behavior. His many areas of interest include the political consequences of misinformation, dynamics of public support during wartime, psychological dynamics of political behavior, survey methodology, and many others, using statistical, experimental, and other methods. His many scholarly awards include the 2013 Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research, given annually for outstanding work on public opinion or survey methodology. Berinsky has extensive experience in editing, including having served since 2013 as the editor of the Chicago Studies in American Politics at the University of Chicago Press.

Dr. Reiter is a leading scholar of international relations. He has published on a wide array of topics, especially domestic politics and war, alliances, terrorism, nuclear weapons, gender and international relations, military strategy, and many others, using statistical, experimental, case study, and formal methods. His scholarly awards include the 2002 Deutsch Award, given to the leading scholar of international relations under age 40 or within ten years of having received the Ph.D. He received the 2010 APSA conflict processes award for How Wars End (Princeton, 2009), given to the best book on conflict processes published in the previous two years. Reiter has extensive experience in editing, including having served as associate editor for AJPS since 2020.

I received a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University in 2008 and a BA in political science from Rutgers University. Prior to my appointment at the Maxwell School, I was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California-Berkeley. My primary research interests are in American politics, political psychology, political communication, and experimental methods.

The interest that motivates my research is how the tone and content of the political media environment influences how Americans seek political information and form opinions. In particular, I’m interested in how citizens learn and form attitudes when politics is threatening, whether threats come from terrorism, public health outbreaks, or media and elite rhetoric.

My book with Bethany Albertson, University of Texas, Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World, published from Cambridge University Press, explores how anxiety over policy issues like immigration, public health, terrorism, and climate change affect how Americans seek political information, their trust in government, and public opinion. I also worked with cross-national group of scholars from Norway, Finland, and Spain exploring the effects of terrorism on social capital, societal resilience, and public opinion across four countries. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Read the full bio here: https://sgadaria.expressions.syr.edu/?page_id=2

Laura Stephenson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. She holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from Duke University and a BA (Honours) in Political Science and Economics from Western. Her research focuses on comparative political behaviour, elections, public opinion, and democratic engagement, with a particular emphasis on how institutional contexts shape citizen participation and representation. Her published work includes papers in journals such as Electoral Studies, Political Psychology, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Politics and Gender, Political Science Research and Methods and others as well as books such as Provincial Battles, National Prize? Elections in a Federal State (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), The Many Faces of Strategic Voting (University of Michigan Press, 2018), and Electing a Mega-Mayor: Toronto 2014 (University of Toronto Press, 2021).

Candis Watts Smith is Professor of Political Science at Duke University, where she also received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Political Science. Her research expertise highlights the role race, racism, and structural inequality play in shaping the American political landscape. She the author or co-author of Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Identity (NYU Press, 2014), Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making Black Lives Matter (NYU Press, 2019); Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2020); and The History of Race and Politics in America, 1968-Present (Audible Original, 2022). Candis is a co-host of the Democracy Works podcast, and she has given a TED talk on three myths about racism in America that has been viewed over 2 million times.

Zeynep Somer-Topcu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a PhD in political science from the University of California, Davis, and a BA from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). Her research is on the comparative analysis of political parties, elections, and electoral behavior with a focus on advanced parliamentary democracies. In her various publications and projects, she examines political parties' campaign and organizational strategies and their perceptual and behavioral consequences for voters. Somer-Topcu is co-author of Glass Ceilings, Glass Cliffs, and Quicksands: Gendered Party Leadership in Parliamentary Systems (Cambridge University Press 2025), and author or co-author of over twenty academic articles in various journals. She currently serves as one of the chief editors of the British Journal of Political Science and Research & Politics, and is the Chair of the Diversity Committee of the European Political Science Association.

Dr. Cecilia Hyunjung Mo (Ph.D. Political Economics and M.A. Political Science from Stanford University; MPA in International Development from Harvard University; M.A. Education from Loyola Marymount University; and B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies and Mathematics from the University of Southern California) is the Judith E.Gruber Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Nonresident Scholar of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Scientific Advisor for Innovations for Poverty Action, and the Faculty Director of UC Berkeley’s Master of Computational Social Science program.

Dr. Mo conducts basic research in behavioral political economy and aspirations-based models of politics, alongside applied work on democratic citizenship, human trafficking, immigration, inequality, and prejudice. She specializes in experimental methods, impact evaluations, and survey research. Her work has appeared in leading journals including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and PNAS. She has received multiple awards from the American Political Science Association, including the Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award and the Emerging Scholar in Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Award.

Quintin H. Beazer, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2011. Dr. Beazer is an associate professor of political science at Florida State University and associate fellow of the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Professor Beazer studies comparative and international political economy and authoritarian politics, with specialization in Russia and its neighboring post-communist countries. His research examines how politics and economics interact in “messy” environments, where institutions are weak, in transition, or nondemocratic. His research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Quarterly. Together with Holger Kern, he is co-organizer of the Virtual Workshop on Authoritarian Regimes (VWAR), found at www.authoritarianregimes.org.

Olga V. Chyzh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Iowa in 2013. Her research areas are political methodology and international relations. She has published on such topics as human rights, international trade, autocratic regimes, and network analysis. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and Canadian Journal of Political Science, among others.

Julie Dolan is Professor of Political Science at Macalester College. Her research and teaching interests include gender and politics and bureaucratic politics. She is lead author on Women and Politics: Paths to Power and Influence (5th edition) and co-author of Representative Bureaucracy: Classic Readings and Continuing Controversies (with David Rosenbloom) and a series of government simulation-based texts (with Marni Ezra). Her scholarship appears in numerous journals including Political Research Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Women & Politics, and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. She received her BA from St Olaf College and her PhD from American University.

Dr. Nazita Lajevardi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. She researches issues related to public opinion and political behavior through the lens of religious and racial identity, and evaluates how stigmatized groups fare in American democracy. Broadly, her scholarship is related to race and ethnic politics, political behavior, voting rights, and immigration politics. Her scholarship has been published in numerous venues, including American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, and Cambridge University Press, among others.

Kim Twist is Associate Professor of Political Science. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and her B.A. from New York University.

Professor Twist's research focuses on far-right extremism in Western Europe and the United States, and her book, Partnering with Extremists (University of Michigan Press, 2019), explains why mainstream-right parties in Western Europe often invite far-right parties to join them in government. Her research has been supported by a number of grants, including from the National Science Foundation.

She teaches a variety of courses in comparative politics and research methods, including statistics, European politics, British politics, and political parties. Professor Twist was the 2020-21 recipient of the College of Arts & Letters Teaching Excellence Award for tenured / tenure-track faculty. She served as Faculty-in-Residence from 2017-20 for University Towers and M@College.

General Interests

"I am broadly interested in the psychology of political behavior, both of the masses and elites. My recent work has focused on voting behavior and emotions.

I'm working broadly on three projects right now. The first is the ongoing exploration of emotions and political behavior, which involves multiple experiments and polls in the field this past summer and this fall. I am particularly focusing on hope and anxiety as dispositional emotions that direct our prospective involvement with and attention to politics. My preliminary results suggest that high hope individuals are more likely, across the political spectrum, to engage in many types of political activity and particularly in high cost activities such as donating to a campaign, volunteering for a campaign, and running for office.

The second project is an exploration of the genetic bases of political behavior. This year I attended the International Workshop on Statistical Genetics and Methodology of Twin and Family Studies at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics in Boulder, CO, and a follow-up workshop at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatry and Behavioral Genetics in Richmond, VA. Along with Beth Miller of the University of Kansas-City Missouri, we are examining the genetic and environmental influences on in-group and out-group racial and religious attitudes.

The third project is an attempt to further develop the role that undergraduate research plays in a liberal arts education. Through a FaCE Grant from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, a committee of faculty from various ACM schools has joined me to put on a workshop designed to diffuse and disseminate models for undergraduate research across ACM campuses. The goal is to share models across disciplines and career stages amongst ACM faculty, enhancing the role that each of us, as well as our colleagues, can play in the undergraduate research process."

Bob Lupton’s teaching and research examines public opinion and voting behavior in the United States, especially the influence of the foundational predispositions of ideology, core values and partisanship, as well as their contextual correlates, on citizens’ orientations toward the political world.

Elite opinion—particularly that of party activists who shape the attitudes and behavior of elected officials and the mass public alike—is central to his research agenda. Specifically, his published work to date explores the ideological structure and (in)coherence of political party activists and the American mass public, the role of core values in linking citizens’ ideological and partisan identities over time, the asymmetrical attitudinal organization of the major party coalitions and the influence of social network communication on individuals’ political attitudes and behavior, among other topics.

His scholarly interests extend to a range of questions involving political psychology, political cognition and comparative political behavior. His peer-reviewed articles appear in several leading political science journals, namely the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Psychology and Political Behavior.

Tasha Philpot has spent over 20 years in academia as an award-winning author, advisor, and educator. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Marquette University, and a Master of Public Policy and PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan. Currently, Dr. Philpot is a Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is also affiliated with the Center for African and African American Studies, the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Philpot’s research focuses on the conditions that enable marginalized groups in American society to function in a more democratic system. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and published in her discipline’s top peer-reviewed journals. She has also authored 3 books, the most recent of which is Conservative But Not Republican: The Paradox of Party Identification and Ideology among African Americans (2017, Cambridge University Press).

Karen Denice Sebold is an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas. Her research interests focus on the election administration, the campaign finance system, and presidential primaries. Her research has appeared in journals including The Review of International Organizations, P.S.: Political Science and Politics., Party Politics, and Election Law. Her two previous co-authored books, published with Palgrave Macmillan, explore the networks and political geography of presidential donors. Lexington Books published her recent 2024 solo-authored book on partisan asymmetry and campaign finance oversight at the Federal Election Commission.

Deva Woodly is a Professor at Brown University. She is the author of Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements (Oxford 2021) and The Politics of Common Sense: How Social Movements Use Public Discourse to Change Politics and Win Acceptance (Oxford 2015). She has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as well as the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. Her research covers a variety of topics, from media and communication to political understandings of economics, to race and imagination, and social movements. In each case, she focuses on the impacts of public discourse on the political meanings of social and economic issues as well as how those common understandings change democratic practice and public policy. Her work centers the perspective of ordinary citizens and political challengers with an eye toward how the demos impacts political action and shapes political possibilities.

Julia Azari is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Marquette University. She holds Ph.D., M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in political science from Yale University, and a B.A. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research and teaching interests include the American presidency, American political parties, political communication and American political development. Her research has been supported by the Marquette University Regular Research Grant, the Harry Middleton Fellowship in Presidential Studies, the Gerald Ford Presidential Library Foundation Travel Grant, the Harry Truman Library Institute Scholars Award, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Library of Congress.

Prof. Azari is a regular contributor at the political science blog The Mischiefs of Faction. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog and in Politico.

Dan Butler is a Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on issues of representation. His latest research is focused on the role primary elections play in American politics. He also creates content as the Poli-Sci Brick Guy to help high school students learn about American politics and government (https://apgovernment.org).

Francisco Garfias is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He studies the political economy of development with an emphasis on how states build capacity, consolidate authority, establish institutions and navigate civil conflict in developing countries. His research examines why some states develop the ability to tax and implement policies while others remain unable to raise the minimum required to carry out even the most basic state functions. His research has been published in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among others. Francisco was previously a faculty member at UCSD and holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Economics from Stanford University.

Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a foreign affairs columnist for World Politics Review.

At the University of Chicago, Paul serves as Deputy Dean of Doctoral Education for the Social Science Division. He is also Director of the Summer Institute for Social Research Methods and chair of the Board of the University of Chicago Library. Previously, Paul served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science and was a member of the Center for International Social Science Research advisory board. In addition to these roles, Paul is currently a member of the College Council of the University of Chicago and the Survey Advisory Board of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Paul studies international politics, primarily international security. He has made contributions in a variety of research areas, including the economic and financial aspects of warfare, the formation and operation of military alliances, the militarized fortification of borders, and how states use international organizations to solve individual and collective security problems. He has also written on best practices for using large-n data to study international relations, and regularly oversees large data collection projects.

Paul is the author or co-author of four books, The Economics of War (McGraw Hill-Irwin, 2006), Organizing Democracy (w/ Johannes Urpelainen, University of Chicago Press, 2018), Arguing About Alliances (Cornell University Press, 2019), and Wheat at War (w/ Rosella Capella Zielinski, Oxford University Press, 2025). He has also published numerous research papers in academic journals, including International Organization, World Politics, Political Analysis, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Read Paul’s full bio here: https://www.paulpoast.com/bio-cv.

Didac Queralt is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the domestic and international drivers of state building, with particular attention to taxation and sovereign debt in both contemporary and historical contexts. He is the author of Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance (Princeton University Press, 2022), which received five book awards. His work has appeared in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and the Annual Review of Political Science. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University.

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