Visiting Scholars
Diana Lee
Diana Lee, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, will serve as a Visiting Scholar at the Democracy Center in January 2025. Her research explores the sources of minority under-representation and the role of identity in American politics. In her dissertation, she examines the supply side of minority representation by exploring how racial minorities develop political ambition—from initial interest to actual candidacy—through field and survey experiments. Her methodological research focuses on external validity, experimental methods, and the application of machine learning and AI in social science.
Erin Rossiter
Erin Rossiter, Nancy Dreux Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame, served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in April of 2024. She studies interpersonal communication and its political consequences, with a specific interest in political discussion and polarization.
Caterina Chiopris
Caterina Chiopris, Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in March of 2024. Her research explores the political economy of innovation, regional inequalities, democratic backsliding, and state building.
Theodoros Ntounias
Theodoros Ntounias, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, San Diego, served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in February of 2024. His research concerns fiscal and political recentralization as a strategy of democratic backsliding, with a focus on Europe.
Mellissa Meisels
Mellissa Meisels served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in March of 2023. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University, and will join Yale's Department of Political Science as Assistant Professor in 2025. Her research focuses on the relationships between campaign positioning, electoral competition, and campaign finance in congressional elections, with a particular emphasis on primary races. In her dissertation project, she leverages original data from House primary candidates’ websites to investigate how election dynamics and (sub)constituencies shape campaign positions, and whether these positions provide meaningful signals about future legislative behavior. Her other solo and co-authored work uses causal inference tools, experiments, and structural estimation to evaluate the determinants and effects of money in congressional elections.
Anil Menon
Anil Menon served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in February of 2023. He is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced. His research is motivated by three broad questions: How do traumatic experiences – ranging from interstate wars and forced migration to public health crises – shape short- and long-term political attitudes, behaviors, and institutions? What are the historical roots of contemporary patterns of economic and political development? Are rhetorical appeals to the past persuasive? His work on these questions is published or forthcoming at both academic and policy journals.
Katie Clayton
Katie Clayton served as a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar in October 2022. She is a PhD candidate at Stanford studying American politics and comparative politics. Her research examines political behavior and survey methodology, with particular focus on public opinion about democracy, identity, and immigration. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Political Science Research and Methods, and Political Behavior, among others, and her book, Campus Diversity: The Hidden Consensus (co-authored with John Carey and Yusaku Horiuchi), was published in 2020 at Cambridge University Press. Katie’s dissertation project examines how the public responds to democratic backsliding as it dynamically unfolds.