Participants

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in the sociology department at Brown. I consider myself to be working at the intersection of political and organizational sociology, with a grounding in political economy that orients my theoretical and methodological approaches. Prior to pursuing academia, I have worked on a number of national and local political campaigns as well as within the labor movement. I am deeply inspired by scholars who are able to ground their empirical work in a diverse set of theoretical frameworks, particularly within a tradition as ample as American political economy. I look forward to meeting everyone at the workshop and learning more about becoming a stronger and more well-rounded scholar!

My broad research interests include American political development, parties and organizations, qualitative and mixed methods, and grassroots movements. More specifically I am interested in the role that organizations play in the context of US politics and its federated local structures. I am working on a mixed methods dissertation that examines the spread and effects of progressive electoral movements in geographically and demographically mixed districts lying outside of major cities. As a part of this, I am looking to incorporate and remain attuned to the importance of local histories, economies, and forms of regional exchange that shape political opportunities within my field sites. I hope to gain perspective from this workshop's multi-disciplinary audience to share ideas and learn as much as I can from others doing similar work across a range of fields. 

Jacob Loewenberg Ball is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, he worked as a journalist for several years before beginning graduate school. His interest in American housing policy, particularly the role of race and ethnicity in shaping social welfare programs, emerged during his reporting for an independent newspaper in rural northern Michigan. Covering the challenges faced by a popular tourist community attempting to develop a small number of affordable rental units for local families priced out of the market sparked broader questions about federalism, racial inequality, and the limits of public assistance. 

He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Julia, and their two cats, Freyja and Bernie. Outside of his academic work, he is an avid Detroit sports fan and a committed runner.

Jacob’s research investigates the institutionally mediated processes of change in subsidized rental housing policy. His work focuses on the interactions among decentralized institutional arrangements, racial and ethnic politics, and private business power. His dissertation employs a comparative historical analysis of Germany and the United States between 1960 and 1980, examining how distinct federal systems structure policy development.

By comparing these cases, his research offers insights into how local control, racialized inequalities, and privatization shape gradual institutional change in social welfare policy. It makes two primary contributions: first, by centering the 1960s and 1970s, it highlights earlier manifestations of retrenchment in lower-income housing subsidy programs; and second, it identifies context-specific causal mechanisms underlying the transformation of subsidized housing policy.

More broadly, his research contributes to debates on institutional change, the political economy of welfare states, and the historical development of housing policy.

I am a PhD candidate in the Political Science department at the University of California, Merced. I earned his undergraduate degree in International Political Economy from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Master’s in Global Policy Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Alongside my graduate work, I have worked as an empirical research contractor for organizations such as Social Impact and the First Nations Development Institute. When I'm not on my computer, I'm probably watching basketball or a movie.

My research explores American local political economy, focusing primarily on American Indian tribal governments. I argue that beyond their important role in representation, tribal governments offer a unique lens for understanding local governance across diverse institutional contexts. My work is grounded in qualitative fieldwork with tribal and federal leaders, which informs my quantitative approach: utilizing natural experiments, spatial econometrics, and remote sensing on large observational datasets. My dissertation examines the economic impacts of federal Indian policy and the mechanics of tribal governance capacity.

More broadly, my interests include the development of local governance capacity, public goods delivery, and the study of “exceptional” institutions which sit outside typical political structures. My research has been published in the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy and the Annual Review of Political Science.

Darius Cozart is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, summa cum laude, from George Washington University and an M.A. in Political Science from Princeton University. He is affiliated with Princeton’s Joint Degree Program in Social Policy, the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, and the Lab on Politics, Race & Experimental Methods. His research has been supported by the Effron Center for the Study of America, the APSA Centennial Center, and Princeton’s Department of African American Studies. His dissertation explores how federal law enforcement subsidies shape local governance, municipal fiscal priorities, and punitive state capacity, with lasting implications for racial inequality and democratic responsiveness.

My research takes two main tracks. One examines the institutional development of American punitive governance, particularly policing and incarceration, with a focus on how federal law enforcement assistance became embedded in local fiscal and governing arrangements and reinforced punitive state capacity over time. The second investigates Black political behavior, with particular attention to the factors that explain patterns of partisan attachment, political judgment, and accountability. Across both areas, I am especially interested in how political institutions shape racial inequality, state power, and democratic inclusion in the United States.

Leah is a postdoc and incoming AP (Fall 2026) of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2023 after completing her PhD at Harvard University, she's enjoyed the sunshine, tacos, and fresh fruit. Leah grew up in Atlanta and misses its chicken wings (and her family) everyday. She's a big fan of workout classes, doing improv comedy, and hiking. 

Leah is scholar of community and nonprofit organizations, poverty, and civic life. Her book, tentatively titled "Feeding Americans: How Food Pantries Fuel Civic Life in the USA," builds on her dissertation work which looked at dozens of organizations in the charitable food space in the metro area of Atlanta. The book argues that food pantries are important and ubiquitous civic organizations. Leah argues that our ideas of civicness, and where civic life happens, should be expanded to center how individuals experience and understand reciprocity, belonging, and inclusion, be understood as relational, and deeply driven by interactions in organizational spaces. She's currently writing journal articles related to this meso-level, primarily qualitative research. In the future Leah hopes to explore her ideas of civicness using surveys and engaging understudied organizations and populations and expand her research on charitable food provision efforts in California. 

Preston is a PhD candidate in the political science department at MIT, where his subfields are political economy and quantitative methods. His research examines the politics of climate change adaptation, with a regional focus on the United States and a topical emphasis on property insurance regulation. Prior to graduate school, he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Politics and certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning. He is originally from Nashville, Tennessee. 

My research studies the consequences of rising climate risk for democratic politics. My projects investigate topics such as the drivers of reforms that governments implement in response to rising climate risk and how these policies distribute costs across space and social groups. I also try to shed light on the conditions that make climate adaptation policies politically durable and resilient to backlash. Methodologically, my work frequently involves applying causal inference tools to datasets that combine spatial indicators of climate risk or its effects on the economy—e.g., hazard maps, insurance price or non-renewal rate data—with data on political outcomes such as voting behavior, public opinion, and legislative actions. My dissertation examines one of the most important impacts of climate risk in wealthy countries: disrupted property insurance markets. Different chapters of the project study how governments, citizens, and firms are responding to the unfolding home insurance crisis, examining impacts for policymaking, political behavior, and interest group politics. Although I focus on the US, I am also working on projects studying other regions, including one that investigates citizens’ climate attitudes across African countries, and another that develops an original survey experiment to study individual-level climate adaptation behaviors in Brazil.

Amy Meli is an assistant professor of political science. Her research centers around interest groups and the way they influence the political system. Research projects include an examination of the way involvement in interest groups influences interest group member political efficacy and affective polarization, the relationship between interest groups and the political parties, and corporate reactions to the January 6 insurrection. She also studies the relationship between interest groups and legislators, especially the relationship between interest group involvement and legislative effectiveness.

Amy holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland, an M.A. from the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Communication Studies from Virginia Tech. She comes to academia after a career as a practitioner of politics, including work in the U.S. House of Representatives, corporate public affairs, grassroots organizations, and political action committees.

I am interested in the ways organized interests in the U.S. influence the political system around them. My primary area of research involves how an interest group's partisanship influences group members' attitudes about government and politics. A book on this topic is in production at the University of Chicago Press and is set to be released in February 2027. I have also published articles on interest groups, partisanship, and partisan bias in journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Interest Groups and Advocacy, and American Politics Research.

I am currently working on a project related to strange bedfellows coalitions among interest groups, which my coauthors and I will present at the American Political Science Association conference this fall. I also look forward to presenting my paper on labor unions and partisanship at the CAPE Summer Academy this year. 

Hello! I am a fourth-year PhD student at UC Berkeley. Before pursuing my PhD studies, I was interested in the cultural integration between the majority South Koreans and North Korean defectors, which led me to serve at the inter-Korean liaison office at the DMZ as a military officer. At graduate school, I've shifted my substantive focus to the making of socially integrative policy in the US and the role of interest groups. I am from South Korea, and grew up in Daegu, the birthplace of dictator presidents. 

I study the lobbying influence of highly-resourced interest groups in shaping regulatory outcomes as well as social policy. My current research titled “Lobbying as service exchange” asserts that interest groups voice out on issues that are seemingly diffuse and weakly tied to firm-specific benefits to win favors and signal alignment with key legislators. Substantively, I am interested in politics that involve intersections of economic and cultural issue areas, such as when highly-resourced and heavily-regulated firms align with socially progressive causes like LGBTQ+ inclusion. These interests broadly cross between lobbying theory, antitrust regulation, and cultural policy outcomes. Methodologically, my research draws on both quantitative analysis and semi-structured interviews. 

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. In 2026-2027, I will join the Local Politics Lab at Harvard as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2027, I will begin as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College. I received my PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2025, and I hold a B.A. in Political Science, Philosophy, and German from Tufts University. Prior to graduate school, I was a research associate in the Political Science department at MIT.

My research is broadly focused on representation, local political economy, and political geography. Specifically, I study who holds power in American local governments, how that drives decision-making, and whose interests are reflected in policy, especially land use policy. I am particularly interested in these dynamics in small-town America. Another branch of my research explores attitudes about descriptive representation. My work combines descriptive and causal methods, including designs for causal inference with observational data, text analysis, semi-structured interviews, and original surveys and survey experiments.