A presentation on faculty research in the Political Science Department can be found here. 

Current Faculty Research Projects

• Prof. Julia Azari is continuing her research on the American presidency and U.S. political parties. She has just completed a book about race and the American presidency, Backlash Presidents (Princeton University Press, 2025) and is co-editing a volume on the impact of the presidency of Donald Trump. She has ongoing research projects on the strength and legitimacy of political parties, and about the impact of post-election narratives. 
• Prof. Lowell Barrington is currently working on three projects. The first examines the tension between increasing attachment to civic national identity and increasing resentment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. It is based on survey data from two national surveys in Ukraine, collected in the fall of 2022 and the fall of 2018. The second is a work on the challenges to reaching a negotiated settlement to end the ongoing war in Ukraine. The third is a revision of his introductory comparative politics textbook (Comparative Politics: Structures and Choices) under contract with Cambridge University Press. 
• Prof. Mark Berlin is currently working on a number of research projects related to the prevention of and accountability for torture. The largest of these projects focuses on the now well-documented use of torture by Chicago Police detectives against criminal suspects throughout the 1970s and 80s. Specifically, the project examines why the system of police oversight and accountability in Chicago failed for so long to stem the abuses, as well as how efforts to achieve justice for the survivors developed over time.
• Prof. Noelle Brigden is currently working on a project that maps the im/mobilities produced by gang borders in El Salvador to theorize globalization and the reordering of the nation-state through the lived spatial orientation of people. She recently completed a visiting fellowship at the Princeton University Institute for International and Regional Studies. Her book, The Migrant Passage: Clandestine Journeys from Central America was published by Princeton University Press in 2018.
• Prof. Risa Brooks' research includes a book project (with Peter White) that evaluates the nature and implications of 鈥減olitical control of the military鈥� in authoritarian regimes. It includes a new theory of variation in political control, which is evaluated with large-n quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis in cases selected from around the world, including several from the Middle East and North Africa. Her research on the United States focuses on issues of military professionalism, military advice and civilian control of the military. An additional current project explores the implications for territorial safe havens for the incidence of complex terror attacks in Europe and the United States and includes data collection of terrorist attacks in both regions. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Brooks remains engage with policy debates related to her areas of expertise, and national security more broadly.
• Prof. Darrell Dobbs is currently exploring the scope and limits of the classical trivium and quadrivium in search of an even more foundational art of learning, which might inform a pedagogical modus operandi suited to Plato鈥檚 conception of the divine in man.
• Prof. Lucia Kovacikova is currently working on two projects. The first is a book project, developed from her dissertation, which examines sub-state governments鈥� capacities and the effect they have on international economic development and paradiplomacy. The project focuses on cases in both North America and Europe. The second project uses statistical data to examine the different types of sub-state international offices and asks what factors lead to this variation.
• Prof. Paul Nolette is currently researching how elites in the legal profession have contributed to contemporary American political development through legalistic channels 鈥� for example, by seeking to change lawyer ethics rules and advocating for changes in plaintiffs鈥� attorneys fees in federal statutory litigation. While initially appearing to concern issues of 鈥渓aw鈥� and not 鈥減olitics,鈥� these changes involve very real political conflicts with important consequences for American politics.
• Prof. Jessica Rich is working on a book that draws lessons from Brazil to help Americans rethink the politics of healthcare reform, while she is simultaneously producing and co-directing a companion documentary film (with David Lombeida and Dinesh Sabu). A second project, with collaborators Santiago Anria and Candelaria Garay, investigates the role of social movements in sustaining government policies. A third project looks at what makes executive agencies more versus less resistant to political attacks.
• Prof. Philip Rocco has just completed work on a book, Counting Like a State (University Press of Kansas, 2025), which examines how conflict and cooperation between federal, state, and local governments shapes the implementation of the United States census. A second book project, Madison鈥檚 Engineers: How Policy Science Remade Federalism (under contract, Columbia University Press), will analyze how policy experts reshaped the relationship between the federal government and the states during the latter half of the twentieth century. A third project, supported by a multi-year grant from the Joyce Foundation, focuses on how U.S. cities are using their American Rescue Plan Act funds to support novel community violence interventions. 
• Prof. Pat Sobkowski is currently working on a book project, under contract with the University Press of Kansas, titled The Steel Seizure Case: The Development of Congressional and Presidential Power in Times of War.
• Prof. Mai Truong is studying the interaction between movements, states, and publics in authoritarian regimes, focusing on how mobilization, coalition-building, and state strategies 鈥� ranging from propaganda and repression to foreign policy 鈥� shape political outcomes and public attitudes. Within this broad agenda, she pursues projects in three interconnected areas: (1) the conditions under which cross-movement coalitions form and endure, (2) how citizens in authoritarian contexts perceive and respond to activism, and (3) how activists, citizens, and lower-level bureaucrats navigate evolving authoritarian politics and crises. Her work draws on extensive fieldwork in Vietnam and Malaysia, complemented by original survey and field experiments, cross-national datasets, and historical process tracing. Regionally, she focuses on East and Southeast Asia, while her theoretical contributions engage broader debates on authoritarian politics, social movements, and political behavior.