Hi, I'm Dot Sawler!

I am 5th year Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester, where I am a Democracy Center Fellow for the 2026-2027 academic year. During the 2025-2026 academic year, I was a fellow with the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy.

I study political behavior, with a focus on the relationship between political attitudes and beliefs. My secondary focus is on developing measurement tools to allow social scientists to improve the measurement of public opinion and political behavior. Broadly, I am interested in how people think and feel about groups (political parties, policy beneficiaries, women, etc.) and how best to elicit these tastes and preferences in the survey environment. My work on these topics appears or is forthcoming in The Journal of Politics and PNAS: Nexus.

I am on the 2026-2027 job market! You can read my job market paper here.

To learn more about my work, please check out my C.V. or my Research page. To get in touch, please reach out by email.