Political Science News

Professor Jay McCann

Congratulations to Dr. James McCann on his appointment as Interim Department Head of Political Science! Dr. McCann has been a professor of Political Science at Purdue University since 1991. His areas of expertise include public opinion, political psychology, and survey design and methodology. McCann is a founding member and co-director of the Methodology Center at Purdue and has won dozens of fellowships, awards and grants. In 2025, Professor McCann received the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Graduate Teacher award in recognition of his teaching and scholarly excellence

 

Dr. Cherie Maestas

Congratulations to Dr. Cherie Maestas for being named the College of Liberal Arts Associate Dean for Research, Innovation & Graduate Education! Dr. Maestas served as Professor and Head of the Political Science Department from 2019-2025, guiding the department through a period of substantial growth. Dr. Maestas publishes research on topics related to political communication, political psychology, risk attitudes, and legislative responsiveness.  She has held administrative appointments and provided service to the field in leadership roles for more than twenty years.

Molly Scudder  Tara Grillos

Scudder and Grillos Paper on Deliberation wins Best Paper Award!  The Democratic Innovations Standing Group of the European Consortium (ECPR) for Political Research has awarded a 2025 Best Paper Award to Mary F. (Molly) Scudder and Tara Grillos for their paper “Cynicism as Contagion, Deliberation as Inoculation?” presented at the ECPR General Conference. This award reflects the high quality of research presented and the strong alignment with the section theme, “Coupling and Connecting Democratic Innovations.” Scudder and Grillos’s paper offers a novel theoretical account of cynicism as a contagious force that can erode generalized trust and cooperation Read more 

Eddie Yang

Congratulations to Dr. Eddie Yang on being awarded the 2025 Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association’s Information Technology and Society section for his dissertation, “Automating Autocracy: Authoritarian Institutions and the Politics of Artificial Intelligence.” Yang’s research highlights how authoritarian regimes, by silencing citizens and suppressing information, inadvertently weaken the very datasets their AI systems rely on. This paradox  Read more 

Lisa Argyle Headshot
Purdue Political Science Welcomes Professor Lisa Argyle The Department of Political Science is delighted to announce that Lisa Argyle has joined Purdue as Associate Professor of Political Science. Argyle’s research sits at the intersection of computational social science and political behavior. She is particularly interested in how people talk about politics—in everyday settings as well as online—and how advanced models and experiments can deepen our understanding of persuasion, polarization, and political participation. She has focused much of her work on exploring how large language Read more
Tara Grillos Headshot
Tara Grillos Honored by APSA Dr. Tara Grillos, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, has been awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholar Award by the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) section of the American Political Science Association. The honor was presented at the STEP section business meeting during the 2025 APSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, recognizing her as a researcher within ten years of her PhD whose work is making notable contributions Read more
Mazie Bernard Headshot
Spotlight Scholar Mazie Bernard Purdue Political Science graduate student Mazie Bernard was selected by APSA’s Interpretive Methodologies and Methods (IMM) group as an IMM Spotlight Scholar for the 2025-2026 academic year. The Spotlight Scholars program aims to highlight three outstanding early-career scholars each year whose work showcases or advances interpretive approaches to the study of politics. During their tenure, each Spotlight Scholar is paired with a more senior interpretivist scholar who will provide mentorship. APSA pairs early career scholars with senior scholars who Read more
Professor Daniel Schiff

Dr. Schiff Shaping AI Policy As a subject matter expert in technology policy and AI governance, Assistant Professor Dr. Daniel Schiff led a workshop in Indianapolis on March 18th in collaboration with the Future Caucus to explore the growing need to consider AI in policymaking. The Future Caucus is a national, nonpartisan group that works with young policymakers in a bipartisan fashion, on Read more

Professor Ann Clark

Distinguished Scholar Award for Dr. Ann Marie Clark Prof. Ann Marie Clark has been awarded the prestigious Distinguished Scholar Award by the International Studies Association’s Human Rights Section. The award will be conferred at the 2025 International Studies Association Meeting in Chicago this week, where a panel discussion has been planned to honor her work. Clark's research has focused on norms and discourse in international relations, the theory and practice of international human rights, and the influence of non-governmental organizations on state behavior. Her work has explored global justice and the ways in which Read more

Group of five students at the Purdue Google AI Summit

Purdue-Google AI Summit Political Science graduate students joined GRAIL lab colleagues and co-director Professor Daniel Schiff at the AI Summit hosted by Purdue and Google.  Dr. Schiff moderated the "Uniting Education, Business and Government" discussion panel. The event Read more

Spotlight: Purdue PhD Program Celebrates Recent Student Success and Milestones  "My time at Purdue was intellectually stimulating and set me up for success in my academic career” Janel Jett (PhD 2022, NCEC Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Harry S. Truman School of Government and Public Affairs)   -  Read more

Professors Kaylyn Jackson Schiff and Daniel Schiff

“The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?,” recently published research in the American Political Science Review by Dr. Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Dr. Daniel S. Schiff,  and Dr. Natália S. Bueno, is gaining attention from journalists and think tanks as they seek to understand the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on elections.  In a CNN interview with Michael Smerconish, Dr. Kaylyn Schiff Read more

Professor Jesse Crosson

The Department is excited to announce that Dr. Jesse M. Crosson received TWO Emerging Scholar awards at the 2024 American Political Science Association Meetings in Philadelphia. He is the winner of the 2024 APSA Legislative Studies Section Emerging Scholar Award and the 2024 APSA Political Organizations and Parties Section Emerging Scholar Award.  These awards reflect his exciting research agenda at the intersection of parties Read More

Professor Eddie Yang

The Department is very pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Eddie Yang to the faculty! Dr. Yang recently completed his PhD at University of California San Diego holds a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University’s Kellog Center for Science of Science of Innovation where is working on projects that explore how policies and political institutions shape technological innovation. On one project, he is evaluating the impact of industrial policies on the semiconductor industry and how to use AI to facilitate policy-relevant research. Read More

Professor Brian Kogelmann

The Department is delighted to welcome to faculty Dr. Brian Kogelmann, Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy!  Dr. Kogelmann brings a rich research agenda at the intersection of ethics and political economy.  He is particularly excited to be working on a project that explores the ethics of creative destruction: “AI is changing the world fast. Read More

Oxford Handbook of AI Governance Virtual Book Launch
The International Politics and Responsible Tech lab (iPART) and Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) at Purdue invite you to a virtual book launch for the new Oxford Handbook of AI Governance.  Read more

Logo for the Methodology Center

Interdisciplinary Foundations of Research Design
How do we make a valid causal inference or a good behavioral forecast? What are the standards for evaluating the measurements of key concepts for a research study? What does it mean for a finding to be "statistically significant"? These are the kinds of questions we will be exploring in this new course available to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.  Read more

Professor Swati Srvistava

Hybrid Sovereignty in World Politics
Drawing on extensive original archival research, Dr. Swati Srivastava reveals the little-known stories of how this hybrid power operated at some of the most important turning points in world history: spreading the British empire, founding the United States, establishing free trade, realizing transnational human rights, and conducting twenty-first century wars. Read more

New Faculty

Purdue Political Science is home to new research labs and programs to support multi-field research collaboration among faculty, post-docs, graduate, and undergraduate students. Lab themes address complex questions about technology, governance, institutions of democracy, law, conflict, political attitudes, and political behavior. They advance new tools for research such as audio and video analytics, computational methods, latent-variable measurement, experimental methods, and causal inference. Read more

Purdue Political Science is thrilled to welcome eleven new colleagues hired in the last two years including Andy Baker, Miram Barnum, Mollie Cohen, Jesse Crosson, Bryce Dietrich, Tyler Girard, Liana Eustacia Reyes, Daniel Schiff, Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Minh Trinh, and Shan Zhou. Read more

Professor Molly Scudder

Professor Scudder's  new book, "The Two Faces of Democracy: Decentering Agonism and Deliberation" asks: How should defenders of democratic life respond to threats to democracy?  Read more

Assistant Professor Kaylyn Jackson Schiff

Professor Kaylyn Jackson Schiff receives Best Dissertation in the Field of Public Administration Read more

Ann Marie Clark

Professor Ann Marie Clark traces the evolution of a new international human rights ethos developed by activists in language, law, and practice over the past 50 years in Demands of Justice: The Creation of a Global Human Rights Practice Read more

Swati Srivstava

Faculty Spotlight: Professor Swati Srivastava  asks three interrelated questions: (1) How is private power expressed in global politics? (2) How does global private power interact with public power? (3) How can global private power be held accountable? Read more

 
Students at Professor Will event

Professor Melissa Will draws on her CIA background when speaking to a crowd of Purdue community members about the situation in Afghanistan.  Read more