Our research is cross-cutting and intradisciplinary. Click on the research clusters below to explore some of the key areas of research in our department.
Our research focuses on the paradoxes, unintended consequences, and hidden costs of efforts to promote democracy. On the surface, democratic reforms are designed to enhance the quality of democracy, but such reforms do not always lead to outcomes that are, in fact, democratic. Citizen empowerment movements define and constrict "valid" modes of political participation. Efforts to regulate political finance may entrench the power of dominant political parties and interest groups rather than spur new contestants and electoral competition. The adoption of electoral systems ostensibly designed to be more representative often mask hidden undemocratic motives. Mechanisms put in place to reduce electoral fraud sometimes increase fraud, alienate voters, or prevent people from going to the polls. In countries across the globe, middle class citizens endorse order and stability rather than mass participation, freedom, or equality as the goals of good government. Scholars in this cluster draw on a variety of methods rooted in interpretive, historical, post-structural, and quantitative research traditions.
Professor Ahmed's main area of specialization is democratic studies, with a special interest in elections, voting systems, legislative politics, party development, and voting rights. She examines these issues in historical and comparative perspective and her work combines a regional focus on Europe and the United States.
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
Ray La Raja's areas of expertise include political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, elections, political participation, American state and local politics, public policy and political reform. He is co-author with Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes of Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics (Cambridge University Press 2020).
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts.
My subfield of specialization is comparative politics and my methodological areas of expertise are interviewing, working with concepts, and interpretivism. Substantively, I study the meaning of democracy, the practice of voting, and the administration of elections.
We study and teach a variety of qualitative and quantitative approaches to and methodologies for conducting political inquiry. Our areas of expertise include computational social science, field research, political ethnography, the analysis of political text, public opinion polling, survey experiments, elite interviews, comparative case studies, social network analysis, topic modeling, the philosophy of social science. In addition to using and developing methodological tool-kits, we also critically analyze them, and embrace projects that blend and fuse different ways of knowing at science's cutting edge.
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
My research interests include U.S. and comparative ideologies, political communication in mass and social media, public opinion, and the intersection of identity and political beliefs.
Ray La Raja's areas of expertise include political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, elections, political participation, American state and local politics, public policy and political reform. He is co-author with Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes of Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics (Cambridge University Press 2020).
I write about how violence becomes normal in societies that pride themselves on being civilized. For my book every twelve seconds, I worked for nearly six months in an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Nebraska and used that experience to think about power and violence in modernity.
My research centers on judicial policymaking in American politics, with a particular interest in the power of courts in the American policymaking context, and the implications of according policymaking power to judicial institutions in a democratic political system.
Professor Rolfe's research interests include individual & organisational decision-making, media and public opinion, social networks, text analysis, and research methodology.
Prior to joining UMass, Professor Rolfe was a Lecturer in Management at the London School of Economics, and a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use.
The "Conflict, Violence and Security" research cluster aims to bring together those working in the areas of conflict and conflict processes, violence (and efforts to counter it, including non-violent approaches to conflict), and security - broadly defined to include human security initiatives as well as the security-seeking practices of political actors from the local to the global.
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.
I am currently serving as the Director of the Legal Studies Program and am happy to answer any questions about this interdisciplinary major.
My research is focused on law and immigration politics, and I have a particular interest in migrant categorization and the concept of a refugee.
Paul Musgrave is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He studies U.S. foreign policy, international relations theory, and how the two intersect. His research has appeared in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, American Politics Review, and International Theory.
I write about how violence becomes normal in societies that pride themselves on being civilized. For my book every twelve seconds, I worked for nearly six months in an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Nebraska and used that experience to think about power and violence in modernity.
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts.
Critical Political Studies (CPS) fosters creative scholarship that critically engages with power inequalities in the world. We think about the ways in which knowledge production has been and continues to be implicated in these power inequalities. Faculty and students combine social and political theory with cutting-edge empirical research to produce scholarship on topics as diverse as:
- Indigenous resistance to petroleum companies in the Americas
- The organization of mass violence on the kill floor of an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse
- How legacies of empire and colonialism shape democratic thought and politics
- The history of exclusion in western democracies
- The creolization of liberal democracy in Africa and its diaspora
- The varieties of discourses on power, legitimacy, and democracy in the Islamic world
- The globalization of political theory beyond Western traditions
- Changing meanings of the environment
- Feminist protest against the global Right
The division does not take existing concepts and categories as given, instead questioning their origins and empirical validity, the work they do in the world, and our role in advancing them. Our scholarship doesn’t take the parameters of politics for granted either, and locates them historically, comparatively, and ethnographically. CPS aims to “denaturalize” the familiar so that we can more clearly see its particularity and historicity.
Our division focuses on race, patriarchy, colonialism, the state, animality, environment, and the economy, among other concepts. Drawing widely on ideas, theories, concepts, methods, and data from across the social sciences, humanities, and arts, we also engage with knowledge produced beyond the academy, and speak to audiences beyond the university. CPS is open to any methodological perspective but we prioritize contextualized understandings and scholarship that has close-to-the ground familiarity with lived experiences and understandings. We write in ways that are clear and accessible, and consider ourselves situated and engaged intellectuals, shaped, formed and constituted by events, stories, relationships, texts and experiences. And despite our common desire for a critical study of politics, we disagree, sometimes vigorously, on key questions such as—what is the role of the state? can capitalism ever be good?—but we value the insights that such debates generate.
Professor Ahmed's main area of specialization is democratic studies, with a special interest in elections, voting systems, legislative politics, party development, and voting rights. She examines these issues in historical and comparative perspective and her work combines a regional focus on Europe and the United States. She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral...Read more
My research interests include Greek philosophy and tragedies, Nietzsche, contemporary liberal theory, and American political thought. Civic Research: As part of my civic work in Puerto Rico, I have written several essays on social issues. These essays have been presented in public lectures and on radio and TV programs....Read more
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on issues of popular power, constitutional change, decolonial theory and politics, and indigenous social movements and resistance in...Read more
My research and teaching interests are in American political thought, democratic theory, the politics of race and indigeneity, and political theories of empire and colonialism. My first book, Empire of the People: Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought (University Press of Kansas, 2018), examines the constitutive...Read more
Carlene J. Edie has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1989. She received her PhD from UCLA. Her principal research interests have been in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. She is...Read more
My research and teaching interests are in the areas of political philosophy, Islamic law and political thought, religion and political theory, and comparative and non-Western political theory more generally. My first book, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford, 2009) is an exploration of the Islamic juridical...Read more
I write about how violence becomes normal in societies that pride themselves on being civilized. For my book every twelve seconds, I worked for nearly six months in an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Nebraska and used that experience to think about power and violence in modernity. In 2020, every twelve seconds was...Read more
My subfield of specialization is comparative politics and my methodological areas of expertise are interviewing, working with concepts, and interpretivism. Substantively, I study the meaning of democracy, the practice of voting, and the administration of elections. Read more
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use...Read more
We share an interest in social policy, at urban, local, national, international and global levels and both American and comparative contexts. Faculty in this cluster use many different methods to study topics such as US childcare and education policy, health policy in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, gender, race and family policy in the US and global institutions, science and technology policy, and global/transnational human security policy - among other issues!
Scott Blinder's research focuses on public opinion toward and perceptions of immigration, and more broadly on issues of racial, ethnic, and gender identities in political behavior in the US and Europe. His work examines both the sources of political attitudes and perceptions (for example, in media coverage) and their impact...Read more
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security. I work with...Read more
Carlene J. Edie has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1989. She received her PhD from UCLA. Her principal research interests have been in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. She is...Read more
My research interests lie at the intersection of the politics of race and ethnicity, public opinion, and political behavior. More specifically, my work examines the impact of changing demographics and shifts in the sociopolitical incorporation of racial minorities on the contours of American race relations, campaigns, policy preferences, and...Read more
I am a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My research revolves around struggles over race, representation, and civil and voting rights, and their consequences for politics and policymaking in the United States. I have written extensively on inequality in representation, voting rights politics,...Read more
Dr. Robinson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, at Amherst. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in political science and did a postdoctoral training in social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Robinson's interest range between Black politics...Read more
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts. Dr. Rowen's current projects examine relationships between immigration...Read more
We share an interest in the role of science and expertise in the management of complex systems at multiple levels of politics.
We share an interest in the legitimacy, usability, and ethics of science advice, as well as broader patterns of public policy, emergence, and self-organization of complex political systems. We are open to drawing on insights from computer science, organizational theory, cognitive psychology, as well as political science.
My research interests include world politics, international institutions, international political economy, technology, technological change, and ethics in science and engineering.
I am also one of two UMass advisers for the Five College International relations Certificate. To make an appointment to talk about it, go to SSC Navigate, then...Read more
The Feminist Politics research cluster explores issues related to gender and politics.
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on issues of popular power, constitutional change, decolonial theory and politics, and indigenous social movements and resistance in...Read more
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
Professor Rolfe's research interests include individual & organisational decision-making, media and public opinion, social networks, text analysis, and research methodology.
Prior to joining UMass, Professor Rolfe was a Lecturer in Management at the London School of Economics, and a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Dr...Read more
We share an interest in global forces - economic, religious, and demographic changes; social movements; technological changes; and other globalizing forces that redefine the ability of individuals, families, and groups to form and maintain their own cross-border networks, national identity or redistribute political and economic power; and the processes and structures that channel such global change.
Scott Blinder's research focuses on public opinion toward and perceptions of immigration, and more broadly on issues of racial, ethnic, and gender identities in political behavior in the US and Europe. His work examines both the sources of political attitudes and perceptions (for example, in media coverage) and their impact...Read more
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security. I work with...Read more
My research and teaching interests are in American political thought, democratic theory, the politics of race and indigeneity, and political theories of empire and colonialism. My first book, Empire of the People: Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought (University Press of Kansas, 2018), examines the constitutive...Read more
Carlene J. Edie has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1989. She received her PhD from UCLA. Her principal research interests have been in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. She is...Read more
Paul Musgrave is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He studies U.S. foreign policy, international relations theory, and how the two intersect. His research has appeared in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, American Politics Review, and International Theory. He has written for The Washington Post, Foreign...Read more
I write about how violence becomes normal in societies that pride themselves on being civilized. For my book every twelve seconds, I worked for nearly six months in an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Nebraska and used that experience to think about power and violence in modernity. In 2020, every twelve seconds was...Read more
My research interests include world politics, international institutions, international political economy, technology, technological change, and ethics in science and engineering.
I am also one of two UMass advisers for the Five College International relations Certificate. To make an appointment to talk about it, go to SSC Navigate, then...Read more
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use...Read more
The study of institutions is foundational in political science. We focus on political institutions in a variety of forms, such as legislatures, parties, interest groups, the bureaucracy, and international NGOs and governing bodies. Our research on institutions takes many approaches, including qualitative, quantitative, and interpretive analyses.
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
Ray La Raja's areas of expertise include political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, elections, political participation, American state and local politics, public policy and political reform. He is co-author with Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes of Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics (Cambridge University Press 2020). He...Read more
My research interests include world politics, international institutions, international political economy, technology, technological change, and ethics in science and engineering.
I am also one of two UMass advisers for the Five College International relations Certificate. To make an appointment to talk about it, go to SSC Navigate, then...Read more
I am a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My research revolves around struggles over race, representation, and civil and voting rights, and their consequences for politics and policymaking in the United States. I have written extensively on inequality in representation, voting rights politics,...Read more
My research centers on judicial policymaking in American politics, with a particular interest in the power of courts in the American policymaking context, and the implications of according policymaking power to judicial institutions in a democratic political system. My work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, The Journal of Law,...Read more
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use...Read more
What politics means is an open question, but there is no doubt that politics is meaningful. Politics and language are thus inseparable, and our faculty examine their relation in various and complementary ways. We study how language constructs our political and legal reality, as well as how it occasionally disrupts it. We study the use of framing in political communication, as well the politics of framing. We study the role of protests in the Middle East, as well as the impact of new media for the American democratic process. We bring insights from ordinary language philosophy to the project of an empirical social science, and we read classics of social science for new insights in the philosophy of language. We are open to students with diverse methodologies, backgrounds and interests, and are a generally likable bunch.
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
My research interests include U.S. and comparative ideologies, political communication in mass and social media, public opinion, and the intersection of identity and political beliefs. I have worked on methodological problems in measurement, text analysis, and network analysis, but I am especially interested in methods that put statistical and computational tools to use...Read more
I write about how violence becomes normal in societies that pride themselves on being civilized. For my book every twelve seconds, I worked for nearly six months in an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Nebraska and used that experience to think about power and violence in modernity. In 2020, every twelve seconds was...Read more
My research centers on judicial policymaking in American politics, with a particular interest in the power of courts in the American policymaking context, and the implications of according policymaking power to judicial institutions in a democratic political system. My work has appeared in American Political Science Review; The Journal of Politics; Political Research Quarterly; The Journal...Read more
My subfield of specialization is comparative politics and my methodological areas of expertise are interviewing, working with concepts, and interpretivism. Substantively, I study the meaning of democracy, the practice of voting, and the administration of elections. Read more
Political processes around the globe are increasingly decentralized. Transnational networks (both criminal and civil), social movements, NGOs, private firms, individuals using social media, scientists and expert groups all engage the state and one another, constraining and enabling political behavior and at times substituting for the state as providers of governance.
Faculty in this cluster share an interest in the influence of these non-state actors on all levels of domestic and global policy processes: issue construction, policy framing and implementation, effectiveness, and legitimacy. Whether studying the impact of lobbying and political finance on policymakers, the input of experts on environmental and urban planning debates, or the role of advocacy networks in shaping or constraining global policy options, we take seriously the role of the "sovereignty-free" layer in local, national and global politics.
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security. I work with...Read more
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
Ray La Raja's areas of expertise include political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, elections, political participation, American state and local politics, public policy and political reform. He is co-author with Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes of Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics (Cambridge University Press 2020). He...Read more
I am a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My research revolves around struggles over race, representation, and civil and voting rights, and their consequences for politics and policymaking in the United States. I have written extensively on inequality in representation, voting rights politics,...Read more
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts. Dr. Rowen's current projects examine relationships between immigration...Read more
This research cluster grows out of a collaborative research initiative entitled, “Theorizing the Tahrir Moment as a Model/Modality of Radical Politics: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives,” launched in the spring of 2012 with the support of the Political Science department, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, and the Horwitz Endowment at UMass-Amherst.
Bringing together a variety of disciplinary approaches and regional expertise, faculty and graduate students involved in the Tahrir project met regularly to analyze the surge of protests in 2011 and into 2012 that, first, rocked the Middle East and North Africa, then shook Europe, and, inspired by Occupy Wall Street, subsequently spread to dozens of U.S. cities and other global sites.
Please visit their website for more information and current events.
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on issues of popular power, constitutional change, decolonial theory and politics, and indigenous social movements and resistance in...Read more
The political economy working group aims to build a stronger political economy community within our department, political economy broadly defined. Faculty and grad students circulate papers-in-progress in advance and those who attend offer feedback and critique on the paper. Over the past three years, we have organized over 20 different meetings and some of these papers have gone on to improve student and faculty conference presentations and led to peer-reviewed publications. We also invite a diverse range of political economy thinkers and scholars to campus occasionally.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I teach comparative political economy, development, energy and Central Asian politics courses. My current research examines New England energy politics and electric grid reform, and the climate implications of our energy and water use...Read more
Our interdisciplinary research explores the ways in which institutions and organizations influence, guide, advance, or hinder politics, and we explore the vast array of collective action and social movement activities taking place at the local, state, national and international levels.
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on issues of popular power, constitutional change, decolonial theory and politics, and indigenous social movements and resistance in...Read more
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
Ray La Raja's areas of expertise include political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, elections, political participation, American state and local politics, public policy and political reform. He is co-author with Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes of Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in American Local Politics (Cambridge University Press 2020). He...Read more
I am a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My research revolves around struggles over race, representation, and civil and voting rights, and their consequences for politics and policymaking in the United States. I have written extensively on inequality in representation, voting rights politics,...Read more
We share an interest in the relationship between law and legal systems and the political, economic, social, and cultural processes in which they are embedded. This cluster connects scholars from multiple fields across the department whose work focuses on the formulation, implementation, politicization, and/or modification of the law and law-like systems of meaning at tribal, local, community, national, transnational, or global levels. Active research areas include domestic, international and transnational law-related advocacy, the implementation of international law through domestic, transnational and global policy networks, the role of constitutional law in emerging and established democracies, US and comparative judicial politics, domestic and international law enforcement and criminology, alternative dispute resolution, judicial decision making and selection, international treaty-making and implementation processes, legal policy making, and the social construction of legal understandings in everyday practice.
Angélica Maria Bernal is Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and faculty affiliate with the Center for Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research and teaching focus on issues of popular power, constitutional change, decolonial theory and politics, and indigenous social movements and resistance in...Read more
My teaching and research interests include the politics of war law, transnational advocacy networks, protection of civilians, humanitarian disarmament, and the role of popular culture in global human security policy. I have a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security. I work with...Read more
My research focuses on understanding bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges, social movement litigation, and how people understand the law.
I have published articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Law and Courts, Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry,...Read more
I am currently serving as the Director of the Legal Studies Program and am happy to answer any questions about this interdisciplinary major.
My research is focused on law and immigration politics, and I have a particular interest in migrant categorization and the concept of a refugee. My published work...Read more
My research interests include world politics, international institutions, international political economy, technology, technological change, and ethics in science and engineering.
I am also one of two UMass advisers for the Five College International relations Certificate. To make an appointment to talk about it, go to SSC Navigate, then...Read more
My research centers on judicial policymaking in American politics, with a particular interest in the power of courts in the American policymaking context, and the implications of according policymaking power to judicial institutions in a democratic political system. My work has appeared in American Political Science Review; The Journal of Politics; Political Research Quarterly; The Journal...Read more
Dr. Rowen's research focuses on the use of law to redress mass atrocity and aid vulnerable groups. She is the founding director of UMass' Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, www.umasscjls.org and a research affiliate with the UMass Center of Excellence for Specialty Courts. Dr. Rowen's current projects examine relationships between immigration...Read more
The influx of new immigrants to and from areas such as Latin America, Western Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States and the corresponding change in the racial demography in these regions has led some scholars to foresee a future in which issues of racial and ethnic discrimination, prejudice, and inequality become a thing of the past as personified by the ascendance of President Barack Obama in the United States. Others foresee the balkanization of these regions and a future where widespread racial hostility will result in racial and cultural wars, not racial harmony and understanding. The discipline of political science, with its reliance on systematic and evidence based research can play a key role in adjudicating these two visions of the racial future. More specifically, political science is well positioned to illuminate contemporary trends in partisanship, political participation, public opinion and multiracial coalition formation which all act as indicators of racial harmony or of antipathy in the coming century. Yet, more importantly, political science is well poised to address a number of as yet unanswered questions regarding the racial demography of these areas. What role will political institutions play in the allocation of rights and the participation of new groups in civic life? What, if any policy prescriptions can be devised to reduce ethnic and racial disparities that threaten to lead to unrest? Will our contemporary frameworks concerning citizenship, race, ethnicity, and identity fit with the future demographic configuration of these areas? The answers to these questions necessitate methodological rigor, novel theoretical contributions, and innovative research designs all of which are provided for graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
The faculty in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst offers graduate students the unique opportunity to study these important questions, debates, and theoretical perspectives that emanate from the subfield of race, ethnicity, and immigration. The interests of the faculty at UMass include scholars who study the racial dynamics in Latin America, Western Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States.
Scott Blinder's research focuses on public opinion toward and perceptions of immigration, and more broadly on issues of racial, ethnic, and gender identities in political behavior in the US and Europe. His work examines both the sources of political attitudes and perceptions (for example, in media coverage) and their impact...Read more
I am currently serving as the Director of the Legal Studies Program and am happy to answer any questions about this interdisciplinary major.
My research is focused on law and immigration politics, and I have a particular interest in migrant categorization and the concept of a refugee. My published work...Read more
My research interests lie at the intersection of the politics of race and ethnicity, public opinion, and political behavior. More specifically, my work examines the impact of changing demographics and shifts in the sociopolitical incorporation of racial minorities on the contours of American race relations, campaigns, policy preferences, and...Read more
Dr. Robinson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, at Amherst. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in political science and did a postdoctoral training in social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Robinson's interest range between Black politics...Read more