Kelsey Shoub

Kelsey Shoub is an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy. Her research examines two broad questions: How do descriptive identities (e.g., race and gender) of officials and civilians intersect with context and policy to shape outcomes; and How does language relate to policy and perceptions of politics? To explore these questions, she collects and analyzes large data sets using statistical and machine learning techniques, which she complements with experimental methods. 

Shoub is a co-author of Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2018, co-winner of the C. Herman Pritchett Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Law and Courts). Additionally, her work has appeared in academic journals including Science Advances, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the American Journal of Political Science, Policy Studies Journal, and Urban Affairs Review among others. She also publishes periodically in general-audience outlets, such as The Monkey Cage, hosted by the Washington Post, and 3Streams, hosted on Medium.

Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts, she was an assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina, and before that she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Effective Lawmaking of which she is still an affiliate. She received her Ph.D. and master's in political science from the University of North Carolina and received dual B.A.s in political science and philosophy from the Ohio State University.