Research in Political Science

Dr. Kesicia Dickinson focuses her current research on the perception of African American female candidates by potential voters. She fuses research into her classes because "students are very interested in what's happening in the world around them and they are often looking for the language to identify current events and understand them." One project looks at first generation students and students of color and how they take the information they gain around voting and voting engagement on college campuses back to their homes and families. They act as knowledge brokers by sharing this information with their families.

Dr. Jonathan Klingler and his co-author published an article in the American Political Science Review. Using a new model on nearly 40,000 bureaucratic rules since 1995, they find that the president and Congress influence rule promulgation in a nuanced way. 

Dr. Marvin King led a series of state-wide meetings to provide professional development and networking for non-governmental organizations and other voluntary groups and institutions with a social mission. Supported by grants from the Skoll Foundation and Higher Purpose Co., these workshops championed the work of social innovators to build community wealth within Mississippi for people of color by supporting ownership of financial, cultural, and political power.

Ella Jordan, a recent graduate with a BA in political science, received a prestigious Stamps Impact Prize, a competitive award to enhance undergraduate student-initiated research projects. With the mentorship of Dr. Miles Armaly, she worked on a project titled: Breaking Barriers or Building Resistance? Female Undergraduates' Response to Body Politicization and Its Impact on Legal Attitudes. 

Dr. Greg Love is part of a National Science Foundation grant to analyze how leaders communicate with the public during crises and how the public responds. Using machine learning approaches, they are trying to understand how elected leaders respond to crises, and how voters judge them for their responses, ultimately to provide clues to a nation’s political stability and the accountability of its leaders.

Dr. Steven Schaaf, Assistant Professor of the Middle East, is a co-author of Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism, published by the University of Michigan Press. The authors provide a more nuanced view of the state and decision-making in authoritarian regimes. By focusing on three institutions of the state— legislatures, constitutional courts, and official religious institutions—they explain how the balance of power works within the governing structure of the state and act as possible constraints on the authoritarian leader(s). 

The United Nations presented Dr. Susan Allen (far left in photo) with the 2024 Book Award for her insights into how the UN Security Council makes decisions. Her co-authored book, Bargaining in the UN Security Council: Setting the Global Agenda, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022 and examined the formal and informal factors that influence Security Council priorities and responses to international peace and security threats. Their book became highly recommended reading around the UN leadership and they were brought by the South Korean mission to the UN to consult with member representatives.

Dr. Ben Jones explores the use of public diplomacy abroad by combatants in civil wars. He asks whether and under what circumstances, rebels and governments involved in ongoing civil wars will divert resources away from the battlefield, and instead toward influencing foreign public opinion about the ongoing war and the sides fighting. Moreover, this research project has demonstrated that such public diplomacy efforts can have meaningful results, at times increasing the cooperation between rebels and foreign allies, as well as improving the sentiment with which US government officials discuss governments that engage in public diplomacy during civil wars.

Dr. Lauren Ferry created an original dataset on the timing and intensity of negotiations between borrowing countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for loans during economic crises. One article showed that borrowers can obtain speedier negotiations with fewer compromising conditions on the basis of their ties to major IMF shareholder states. Her second article, the subject of a SoundCloud podcast. discussed how the debt negotiation processes for distressed countries with the IMF has changed in the wake of China’s emergence as a major lender.  

A recipient of the Department Distinction Award, Madeleine Dotson (B.A. in Arabic, Economics, and Political Science with an emphasis in International Conflict and Cooperation '24) received a national Truman Scholarship for aspiring public service leaders. She published research on Russian tactics in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the UM undergraduate journal, Ventures. Her Honors thesis investigated the role of dams in bargaining and analyzed the current conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). She also participated in an Arabic translation internship with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which gathers evidence used to prosecute terrorists.