2022 Research Fellows

2022 Fellows

Dr. Catie Bailard

Dr. Catie Bailard is the Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, Director of the M.A. in Media and Strategic Communication in the School of Media & Public Affairs (SMPA) at the George Washington University. Before joining the SMPA faculty in 2009, Catie received her doctorate in political science from UCLA with concentrations in American Politics, Formal and Quantitative Methods and International Relations. Throughout Catie's academic career, her research has primarily focused on the intersection of politics and information and communication technologies (ICTs). 

To broaden the field of political communication research, Catie was the first to research the effect of mobile phones on corruption in Africa, the first to conduct a comparative analysis of the internet’s impact on democratic attitudes, the first to demonstrate empirical effects of crowdsourced election-monitoring in Africa (with colleague Steve Livingston) and the first to implement field experiments testing the effects of ICT on democratic attitudes in developing countries. Catie received the prestigious Sanders-Kaid award from the International Communication Association for best paper published in political communication in 2012. Recent published works include a comparative analysis of the effect of Chinese media in Africa on local public opinion, the effect of mobile phones on the probability of intrastate conflict, and the effect of broadcast corporations’ bottom lines on the tenor of news produced by their respective outlets.

Dr. Matthew Boxer

Dr. Matthew Boxer is an Assistant Research Professor in the Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership. He is an Assistant Research Professor at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute. His research varies widely and includes socio-demographic research on the Jewish community in the United States, social psychological processes of Jewish identity development, Jewish young adults' volunteer habits and preferences, Israel studies on college campuses in the United States and Canada, the impact of formal and informal Jewish educational experiences on Jewish identity, and American Jews' perceptions of and experiences with antisemitism. 
 
Matt taught research methods, statistics, and trends in contemporary Jewish life for ten years in the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program. He serves on the national advisory board of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life at Colby College and served for 15 years in various capacities on the board of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. His areas of expertise are social psychology; race and ethnicity; religion; sociology of education; volunteering; Jewish identity; antisemitism; quantitative methods; and qualitative methods.

Dr. David Broockman

Dr. David Broockman is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley (2015).

His research focuses on political representation, public opinion and elections, American politics, and political behavior.

Dr. Paul A. Djupe

Dr. Paul A. Djupe is a political scientist at Denison University directing the Data for Political Research minor and specializing in religion and politics, social networks, gender and politics, and political behavior. He is an affiliated scholar with Public Religion Research Institute and the editor of the Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics series with Temple University Press. He was the co-editor of Politics & Religion (2011-2016). And he blogs primarily for religioninpublic.blog, but did for 538, the Monkey Cage, and others. 

He is interested in a lot of things, but especially the apolitical roots of political engagement. He examines social networks in churches, clergy political speech and engagement, small group interactions, and experimental results regarding how individuals react to religious cues used by political actors and political cues used by religious actors. He explores how individuals construct and use their social networks differently, with special interest in how the social psychology of gender structures social network influence and how associations drive social contact. He is also interested in how individuals connect with and evaluate interest groups. He has trained attention on social science disciplines – what shapes how we conduct our careers, especially focused on gender gaps. And this has resulted in a book with Amy Erica and Anand, The Knowledge Polity: Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences.

Dr. Maya Flax

Dr. Maya Flax is a senior lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of West London (UWL). Maya has worked as a criminal defense barrister in London. She represented and defended clients in criminal courts and prepared multi-handed jury trials. She then worked as a civil and commercial mediator, mediating in various disputes ranging from financial settlements to school admissions. 

Hate crime is the subject of her Ph.D. and remains her primary research interest. She is in the process of publishing articles on the process of shunning and has a keen interest in the topic of bystanders of hate crime.  

Maya has a strong commitment to engaging with her students and in ensuring that the material taught is clear and understood by all. She has been accredited with a UWL Star Award for Teaching Excellent each year since she has commenced teaching in UWL.

Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn

Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor in Israel Studies at the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies at Northwestern University. Her expertise focuses on Diaspora-Israel relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Israeli ultra-nationalist movement. Her first book, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Harvard, 2017), hailed as a landmark contribution to the field, was the winner of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature Choice Award, a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award, and a nominee for the 2021 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. She is currently working on a new book manuscript tentatively entitled "New Day in Babylon and Jerusalem: Zionism, Jewish Power, and Identity Politics Since 1967" on American Zionism since the Six Day War. 

Dr. Hirschhorn teaches courses and mentors both undergraduate and graduate students in Israel Studies and related fields. Prior to her appointment at Northwestern, Dr. Hirschhorn was the University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford (2013-2018) and a postdoctoral fellow in Israel Studies at Brandeis University (2012-2013). She is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (M.A., Ph.D.) and the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships. Apart from her academic work, Dr. Hirschhorn is also a prominent voice bringing scholarship into the public square as a frequent public speaker, writer, media commentator, and foreign policy consultant on Israel/Jewish Affairs.

Dr. Josh Kalla

Dr. Josh Kalla is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley (2018). His research studies political persuasion, prejudice reduction, and decision-making among voters and political elites, primarily through the use of randomized field experiments. His interests include American politics and quantitative methods.

Dr. Andrew R. Lewis

Dr. Andrew R. Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati. He researches the intersection of politics, religion, and law in America, with an expertise in Evangelicals and politics, church-state relations, conservative legal activism, and rights politics. His research engages with the themes of representation and American constitutionalism, through a variety of lenses. His book The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (Cambridge, 2017) documents the rise of rights politics within conservative Christian politics and the important role that the pro-life movement has played in that process. It was awarded the 2018 American Political Science Association’s Hubert Morken Award for the Best Book on Religion and Politics. He has also published articles in several leading academic journals. He is currently writing a book manuscript on the polarization of religious freedom in the U.S. His research interests include Religion and Politics, Politics of Law, Interest Groups and Advocacy, First Amendment Law, and Public Opinion.

Dr. Jacob S. Lewis

Jacob S. Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. His research centers on African politics and focuses on issues of corruption, conflict, and political psychology. His work has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Politics, and Political Studies Review. Professor Lewis maintains an active connection with the world of public policy and international development. Before beginning his life as an academic, he managed democratization and post-conflict stabilization programs across Africa as well as in Afghanistan. His research interests include African politics, social movements, conflict processes, political psychology, social trust, ethnic politics.

Dr. Sandra N. Morgenstern

Dr. Sandra N. Morgenstern is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and the chair of Migration and Integration at the University of Mannheim. Her research interest concentrates on migration research with a special focus on migration politics, the emigration decision, migration movements, and xenophobia. Methodologically she is primarily dedicated to field experiments, social network approaches, and quantitative research methods in general. 

She earned her Ph.D. (Dr. rer. soc) from the University of Konstanz, where she was part of the Graduate School of Decision Sciences and the Comparative Politics Research Group.

Laura Royden

Laura Royden is a Ph.D. student in the Government department with a research focus on American Politics, elections, judicial politics, representation, antisemitism, and Jewish politics.

Dr. Anand E. Sokhey

Dr. Anand E. Sokhey joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2009 after receiving his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Anand specializes in American politics, and his research examines how formal and informal political conversations, interpersonal networks, and environments — whether defined in terms of organizations or geographic boundaries — independently and interactively shape opinion formation and decision-making.  His research intersects with scholarship on communication, gender, religion and politics, and political psychology, and much of it is characterized by original data collection. He is the co-author of Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces (2019, Oxford University Press), and his work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science and The Journal of Politics, among other outlets. He currently serves as the director of the Keller Center for the Study of the First Amendment and is a faculty fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Science.

Andrew Thompson

Andrew Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at the George Washington University. His research examines how threat and anxiety shift attitudes about American democracy. Specifically, he explores how racial demographic changes motivate stronger support for anti-democratic practices among the American public. He shows that partisan considerations and elite rhetoric are central to understanding how Americans process information about the changing U.S. demographic landscape, and how supportive they are of anti-democratic policies. Ultimately, he shows that as the country diversifies, democratic considerations and overall support for American democracy are bound to shift dramatically among the mass public.

Dr. Rebekah Tromble

Dr. Rebekah Tromble is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs and Director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics (IDDP) at George Washington University. She recently joined George Washington University after spending eight years in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on political communication, digital research methodology, and research ethics. She is particularly interested in political discourse on social media, as well as the spread and impact of online misinformation. Her research has been published in leading journals such as New Media & Society, International Studies Quarterly, and Political Communication. 

Dr. Tromble is currently leading two large research projects. The first, funded by Twitter, brings together a team of international researchers to develop metrics for assessing the extent of phenomena such as echo chambers, incivility, and intolerance across political topics, different geographical regions, and languages. The second project, in collaboration with scholars at Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and the Alan Turing Institute (London), is entitled “The (Mis)Informed Citizen” and seeks to develop computational tools that will allow researchers to analyze and assess the quality of online news content.

Dr. Tromble consults regularly for both industry and policymakers, particularly on topics of digital platform accountability, responsible data use, and best practices for combatting the effects of misinformation.

Michael Zanger-Tishler

Michael Zanger-Tishler is a Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy at Harvard University. He is interested in understanding the relationship between ethnoracial division and the criminal justice system in a comparative context, specifically looking at the United States, Israel, and France. As an undergraduate, he wrote his senior thesis on criminal justice contact among diverse populations using an original survey and co-authored an article entitled "The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts" with Vesla Weaver and Andrew Papachristos. Prior to beginning the Ph.D. program, he was a CASA Arabic fellow in Amman Jordan (2018-2019) where he studied Formal and Levantine Arabic and worked as a volunteer translator for the International Refugee Assistance Project.