Featured Faculty

Our faculty members are on the cutting edge of research in all of the sub-fields of political science. Their publications drive understandings of theory, define historical context, and set the stage for research done around the world. Here is a sample of our featured faculty members and the work and research they do.

Political Psychology

Paul Goren

Professor Paul Goren is a scholar and teacher of American voting behavior, public opinion, and political parties. His current research centers around the politics of abortion & LGBT rights, how basic values affect public opinion, racial prejudice & support for the welfare state, and issue-driven party sorting.

His recent monograph, Stronger Issues, Weaker Predispositions: Abortion, Gay Rights, and Authoritarianism, examines the theory long held by political psychologists that authoritarianism structures the positions people take on cultural issues and their party ties. He presents the argument that authoritarianism is durable, unlike the attitudes most people hold on most issues. However, this is not true of the issues that have driven America's long running culture war: abortion and gay rights, demonstrating that moral issue attitudes are stronger than authoritarianism.

Using data from multiple sources over the period of 1992-2020, Professor Goren's research shows that moral issue attitudes endure longer than authoritarianism, moral issues predict change in authoritarianism, authoritarianism does not systematically predict change in moral issues, and moral issues have always played a much greater role structuring party ties than authoritarianism.

Learn more about Paul Goren's monograph.

Political Theory

Nancy Luxon

Professor Nancy Luxon spent the spring and summer of 2025 abroad as a Visiting Scholar in residence at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and participating in a Senior Fellowship with the Institute of Advanced Studies - Leuphana to further her research.

For several years, her research has been oriented to the connections between French political thought and anticolonial struggle in North Africa. She considers what it means to empower people for political agency in a hierarchical, racialized colonial context, where they are seen as "objects" of power, not "subjects" capable of acting in their own right. 

Professor Luxon's current research project looks at the institution of the psychiatric hospital and its instantiation in several different sites, such as Algeria, Tunisia, and French North Africa, across the 20th century. This project is an opportunity to take seriously the psychiatric hospital as an institution, and to rethink the place for social institutions and infrastructure in political life.

Learn more about Professor Luxon's opportunities abroad and current research.

Comparative Politics

August Nimtz

Professor August Nimtz and co-author Kyle Edwards' new book serves as a comparative political analysis, offering a unique look at two historically consequential figures, Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass, with two very different theoretical and political perspectives. By juxtaposing their political thought and activism, the authors make insightful observations about race and class in America. Entwined through the book is the question: what sort of politics are needed to achieve real emancipation? 

Listen to Professor Nimtz and Kyle Edwards discuss their book.

International Relations

Tanisha Fazal

Professor Tanisha Fazal was named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 2025, an award rewarding outstanding faculty on the basis of merit, research, accomplishments, leadership activities, and other factors.

For much of her career, Professor Fazal's research has focused on issues around mitigating the human costs of war. Recently, her research has shifted toward exploring the ways climate change is challenging the building blocks of international relations. Due to the uncertain future of climate change, the questions she asks around migration, climate reparations, and technological developments require the use of an ethical lens. No matter what topic she is exploring, Professor Fazal has to be answer the question "so what?" when taking on a new project.

Learn more about Professor Fazal's Distinguished McKnight University Professor award and her research.

American Politics

Kathryn Pearson

Professor Kathryn Pearson was named the 2025 College of Liberal Arts Dean's Medalist. Dean's Medalists exemplify the highest standards of research, instruction, interdisciplinary reach, University citizenship, academic leadership, and local & national engagement.

Professor Pearson's career has been spent demystifying Congress, bringing insight to some of our most pressing questions around power, gender, and partisanship. Her current book project explores themes such as loyalty, polarization, and gender through the leadership paths of figures whose rise to power exemplifies the role of party loyalty and others whose careers reflect the consequences of breaking with party expectations.

Learn more about Professor Pearson's research, teaching, and service.

Methodology

Jane Sumner

Professor Jane Sumner regularly teaches POL 3085: Quantitative Analysis in Political Science, a course that teaches students how to study politics scientifically and use quantitative analysis to answer political questions. Many of the books historically used to teach the class assume students have experience in math, statistics, or computing, which is often not the case. Due to her longstanding frustration with this, Professor Sumner decided to write her own textbook to better teach and understand the needs of her students. The textbook, R for Political Science Research: An Introduction for Absolute Beginners, teaches R, a programming language used for working with data, to students with no background in computing or programing.

Learn more about Professor Jane Sumner's new textbook.