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Research Expertise: Race and Ethnicity

Our faculty conduct research to explore the role of race in politics and society. Their work examines attitudes about social justice movements, policing and protest, and voting behavior. 

Faculty Experts

Ted Brader

Ted Brader

Professor, Department of Political Science

Ted Brader currently serves as the Principal Investigator for the American National Election Studies and Associate Principal Investigator for Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. His research focuses on the role of emotions in politics, political partisanship, media effects on public opinion, and other topics in political psychology.

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Christian Davenport

Christian Davenport

Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen Professor of the Study of Human Understanding

Christian Davenport’s primary research interests include political conflict (e.g., human rights violations, genocide/politicide, torture, political surveillance, civil war and social movements), measurement, racism and popular culture.

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Vincent Hutchings

Vincent Hutchings

Hanes Walton, Jr. Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies

Vincent Hutchings’s interests include public opinion, elections, voting behavior, and African American politics. He studies how the size of the African American constituency in congressional districts can influence legislative responsiveness to Black interests. He is also interested in the ways that campaign communications can “prime” various group identities and subsequently affect candidate evaluations.

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Donald Kinder

Donald Kinder

Philip E. Converse Professor of Political Science

Donald Kinder’s current research interests include rehabilitating the concept of ethnocentrism and developing a psychological theory of framing.

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Robert Mickey

Robert Mickey

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

Robert Mickey’s research focuses on U.S. politics in historical perspective. He is interested in American political development, political parties, racial politics, and policy responses to inequality.

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Angela Ocampo

Angela Ocampo

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Angela Ocampo examines the political incorporation of racial, ethnic and religious minorities both as every-day participants and as political leaders within American institutions. Her current book project investigates the concept of perceived belonging to U.S. society and its influence on political interest and political engagement among Latinas/os/xs.

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Mara Ostfeld

Mara Ostfeld

Assistant Research Scientist, Ford School of Public Policy

Mara Ostfeld broadly focuses on the relationship between race, media and political attitudes. She is currently working on projects exploring how exposure to Spanish-language political media affects patterns of Latino political identification, and the effect of different media frames on attitudes toward immigration policy. Beyond this research, her work has explored the implications of different survey methods when studying racial and ethnic minorities. She has published work in Political Communication and Political Psychology.

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Josh Pasek

Josh Pasek

Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies and Political Science

Josh Pasek’s research explores how new media and psychological processes each shape political attitudes, public opinion, and political behaviors. He also examines issues in the measurement of public opinion including techniques for reducing measurement error and improving population inferences.

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Kevin Quinn

Kevin Quinn

Professor, Department of Political Science

Kevin Quinn’s research focuses on questions of empirical legal studies and statistical methodology. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and has appeared in leading journals in political science, statistics, and law. .

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Shea Streeter

Shea Streeter

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Shea Streeter’s research examines how race and the local environment shape the ways that people experience, perceive, and respond to incidents of police violence in the US.

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Nicholas Valentino

Nicholas Valentino

Research Professor

Nicholas Valentino studies political communication, political psychology, and electoral behavior. His work focuses on political campaigns, racial attitudes, emotions, and social group cues in news and political advertising. His current work examines the intersection between racial attitudes and emotion in predicting political participation and vote choice.

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Research Findings

graphic showing the racial wealth gap

The racial wealth gap

Vincent Hutchings led an experiment showing that people consistently underestimate the racial wealth gap. Study participants were open to learning new information, that information did not change support for policy.  Read more.

Police violence image

Police violence and protest

Research by Shea Streeter shows that most protests emerge after police killings of African Americans. A large number of white Americans are killed by police officers, but their deaths are less likely to lead to protest. Read more.

anger reported by non-white subjects

What we call racial violence matters

Kiela Crabtree and Corina Simonelli find that calling an act of violence a “hate crime” has little effect on perceptions of violence for white Americans. For non-white Americans, however, this label is associated with greater anger in reaction to the incident. Read more.

Recorded Events

Race, Inequality, Policing and the 2020 Election
September 22, 2020
Vincent Hutchings, Shea Streeter and Christian Davenport

Demographic Shifts in the US Electorate
October 22, 2020
Vincent Hutchings

The Minority Vote in 2020: Evidence from the Latina/o/x Community
October 22, 2020
Angela Ocampo