Melinda (Molly) Ritchie

Welcome! I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. I was previously a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics for the 2019-2020 academic year and a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University in 2015-2016.

My Ph.D. is from the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and I received a B.A. in Government from Smith College in 2006. Prior to my graduate studies, I worked in Washington, DC as a legislative assistant for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

My research interests include American political institutions, U.S. Congress, bureaucratic politics, and the impact of separation of powers on policymaking. My current research examines how members of Congress engage with federal agencies on policy issues using an original data set constructed with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records. My research has appeared in Political Behavior, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the American Journal of Political Science.