Our graduate program continues to thrive. We are proud of all of our graduate students and their accomplishments this year. As detailed in our Spring newsletter, five students graduated from our program in May and are headed on to great careers. Our students traveled the world presenting their research at conferences over the summer.  In August, we welcomed eight new PhD students to our program. They are a really impressive cohort and we are excited to see where their research takes them next as they develop their skills in coursework. 

I want to take this opportunity to feature our graduate students who are on the academic job market:

Alex Avery studies how conflict and identity shape gendered political behavior in international relations. She focuses on how violence transforms women’s lives, families, and political participation, shedding light on the everyday political consequences of war beyond the battlefield. She received the American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Dissertation Fellowship, the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Weidenbaum Center Graduate Fellowship.

Irene Barrios studies racial and ethnic politics and political psychology in the United States. Specifically, she investigates how Black Americans evaluate legislators on fostering allyship, representation, and trust. She uses a mix of quantitative (surveys, conjoint experiments, observational data) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) research methods in her research. Her work has been supported by the Rapoport Family Foundation and she has been recognized as a Diversity Fellow by the American Political Science Association.  

Alexis Jang studies gender and politics, electoral preferences, and representation at the intersection of International Relations and Comparative Politics. She studies how domestic political crises and international security environments shape electoral preferences for women’s political leadership. Her work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research and has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

Ruilin Lai studies authoritarian politics, judicial politics, and political communication, leveraging a wide range of methodological tools. His work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Political Science Research and Methods, and other journals. His work has been supported by the Institute for Humane Studies and he received a Weidenbaum Center Fellowship. 

David Nguyen studies elections and representation in American politics, examining how electoral institutions across levels of government shape voter and elite behavior. David analyzes administrative records, surveys, and experiments to examine features of electoral institutions in unique contexts, such as special purpose districts and school boards.

Cecilia Sui develops computational and experimental methods to study political communication in (multilingual) text, audio, and video formats. She uses generative AI models to build controlled experimental stimuli that isolate the causal effects of communication features often confounded in observational data, with an application focused on the effectiveness of adopting “influencer style” in political campaigns. Her research is forthcoming in Political Science Research and Methods, and has been recognized with the Antoinette Dames Prize.

Alma Velazquez studies international and comparative political economy, with a regional focus on Latin America. Specifically, she focuses on how globalization and international economic and geopolitical pressures restructure political authority. Her work is forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly and has been supported by a Global Futures Small Grant and the Weidenbaum Center. 

Taylor Carlson
Associate Professor of Political Science
Director of Graduate Studies