Associate Professor Christopher Lucas has received the 2026 Emerging Scholar Award from The Society for Political Methodology. 

The award is given each year to honor "a young researcher, within ten years of their degree, who is making notable contributions to the field of political methodology." The committee, chaired by Professor Kosuke Imai (Harvard), stated that Lucas was chosen for:

"...outstanding contributions to political methodology, particularly in the analysis of text, speech, images, and video. [Lucas] has developed innovative computational methods, including his Gosnell Prize-winning work on dynamic models of political speech. Lucas has applied these methods to address fundamental questions about elections, democratic accountability, misinformation, and policing. Lucas has also made important contributions to causal inference methodology, including his recent work on causal inference with text and speech data. In addition to his research, he has provided exceptional service to the discipline as Associate Editor for Replication at Political Analysis, where he has played a leading role in ensuring the reproducibility of the journal’s published research."

The Society for Political Methodology was created to "facilitate and further the academic endeavors of its members, including the production and dissemination of their research, the enhancement and reach of their pedagogy, and the quality and quantity of their service in political methodology, i.e., in research methodology and design, in data collection and measurement, in statistics, and in theoretical and empirical modeling in Political Science."

Read more about the award and the Society for Political Methodology on their website.