Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Alin Coman

A misinformation epidemic has been consuming our communities in this relatively new – technologically-advanced - informational landscape. This epidemic spans from the dissemination of isolated pieces of misinformation through social networks, all the way through the development of highly contagious and highly resilient conspiracy theories endorsed by tight-knit communities. We will survey relevant social science literature to understand the factors that facilitate the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Building on current empirical approaches, we will discuss: (a) the psychological and social mechanisms that facilitate the endorsement of conspiracy theories and (b) the strategies aimed at addressing this epidemic. As part of this research seminar we will attempt to design research projects to innovate on both (a) and (b).

Alin Coman is a Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, with a joint appointment between the Psychology Department and the School of Public and International Affairs. His research involves empirical investigations of the formation of collective memories, the dynamics of collective beliefs, and the synchronization of collective emotions in networked communities. 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — John Londregan

The seminar has a dual purpose, on the one hand we will survey the literature on the consequences of regime type.  On the other hand, this seminar will represent the first installment of your apprenticeship as contributors to the academic literature, and so we will delve into the craft of writing a research paper on the consequences of regime type. Of course, these goals complement one another in a very natural fashion; the more you know about how research is conducted, the better you will understand the strengths and shortcomings of the existing literature on political regime type, while it is self evident that knowing more about the subject will enhance your effectiveness as a researcher. 

A repeated theme in our discussion will be the futility of attempting to separate the central issues of dictatorship, democracy, and development into “economic" and “political" spheres, the subject matter of this course is an alloy of economics, politics, and even philosophy. Some of the readings are technical, and I will indicate which these are. You are encouraged to work through the more technical papers, but you are not required to master them in detail. 

Because the consequences of regime type, especially and most directly with respect to political freedom, are so fraught, the policy implications of this research are particularly salient. This isn't simply an interesting problem on intellectual grounds. It is almost impossible not to care about the outcome.

John Londregan is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton, where he works on political economy and political methodology. He is the author of Legislative Institutions in Chile, and he has published in political science and economics journals including the APSR, IO, World Politics, Political Analysis, the QJE and the Rand Journal of Economics. He is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance and currently serves as President of the Princeton chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.  He earned his PhD at Princeton, and he has also taught at UCLA and at Carnegie-Mellon. 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Corrine McConnaughy

Do women want something different than men from the state? Do they need the state to provide for them in different ways? Has their formal incorporation into institutional politics changed how the policy process works? Can and have they made any particular demands upon the state more effectively than men because of gendered processes or influence? Does gender construct particular challenges to seeking policy change? These are the central questions of this course.

As we discuss a range of policy topics, we’ll consider the range of ways that gender enters—how it forms our normative notions of what the state should provide, how gendered life experiences can create differences in men’s and women’s policy needs and values, whether and how policies contribute to gender (in)equality, and how gender is strategically used to create political support or opposition for policies.

Corrine McConnaughy holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan and is Lecturer and Research Scholar in the Department of Politics and co-director of Princeton Research in Experimental Social Science (PRESS). Her research is focused on the function of American democracy, including its responsiveness to organized groups. Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Public Choice, Studies in American Political Development and American Politics Research and she is author of the book The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment (Cambridge, 2013). 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Sophie Meunier

European integration is much more than the common currency shared by 20 of the 27 members of the European Union (EU). It is a process that has brought peace to bitter historical enemies, facilitated the economic growth of its members, and served as an attractive beacon that has stabilized the whole region and beyond. Yet it is now facing a multiplicity of simultaneous crises, from the Russian war in Ukraine to the fallout from Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, from challenges posed by refugee flows to challenges to the rule of law.

In this seminar, we will learn about the history, institutions, and policy functions of the European Union. We will analyze successive stages in the integration process and ask why member states transferred so much power to the EU over the years. We will read and discuss sample works using different empirical strategies and methodologies, which examine the political consequences of these transfers of power and competences to the supranational entity, both at the domestic and at the international levels. And we will reflect on the simultaneous crises currently challenging European integration from all angles. 

The main purpose of the seminar is to give you all the tools, both substantive and methodological, to be able to produce independent research and write an academic-style paper. The main challenge will be for you to do three things simultaneously: learn substantively about European integration; build on the analytical research skills taught in SPI 299; and produce independent research in your JP.

Sophie Meunier is Senior Research Scholar at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. She is Director of the EU Program at Princeton, former Director of the Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society (2022-2024), and former Acting Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (2023-2024). She is the author of Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (Brookings Institution Press, 2001), winner of the 2002 France-Ameriques book award. She is also co-editor of several books on Europe and globalization, most recently Developments in French Politics 6 (Palgrave MacMillan 2020) and Speaking with a Single Voice: The EU as an Effective Actor in Global Governance? (Routledge, 2015). Meunier is the former Chair of the European Union Studies Association (2023-2024). Her current work deals with the politics of investment screening mechanisms and the European Union's recent geoeconomic turn, including as part of the PRISM project and the Beauty Contests grant. She was made Chevalier des Palmes Academiques by the French Government.
 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Tanushree Goyal

This seminar will provide an overview of substantive debates and research which has challenged existing paradigms on women’s political participation, with a focus on research from the Global South. The course will explore research aimed at measuring gender inequality in politics and policy solutions that have been implemented to reduce it. We will discuss the reasons why some efforts have been successful while others have failed or even had negative consequences. The course will pay attention to the role of culture and norms. The instructor will provide guidelines on ideas for research questions and
methods to select a junior paper on the topic. Students will acquire additional skills to develop original research questions and access academic materials more efficiently. The seminar has several assignments that all lead up to the junior paper.

Tanushree Goyal is an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her research lies at the intersection of Comparative Politics, Gender and Politics, and the Political Economy of Development. She is interested in understanding the cause and consequences of gender inequality, and in analyzing institutional interventions that lower gender disparities. Her work leverages a range of research designs and data sources, including natural experiments, large-scale surveys, ethnographic research, and administrative data. Previously, she was a post-doctoral scholar at the Harvard Academy. She is affiliated as a non-resident visiting fellow with the Center for the Advanced Study of India, UPenn. She completed my PhD in Political Science in 2021 at the University of Oxford, where she was a member of Nuffield College. 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Jonathan Mummolo

Police are perhaps the most visible face of American government and the decisions they make every day have immense impact on the lives of civilians. This course explores major questions in the study of police behavior and associated evidence-based policymaking. Topics include debates over the societal role of police, the impact of police on crime, racial bias in policing, strategies for reform, and the political obstacles that stand in the way. Throughout, there will be a focus on learning the building blocks of social science research. Questions about the causes and consequences of various police activities are often hotly contested. Understanding these issues therefore requires the ability to distinguish high from low-quality evidence. We will learn how to critically examine empirical studies of policing, to spot basic logical errors in reasoning, and to credibly evaluate whether the evidence presented in a study supports its claims.

Jonathan Mummolo is an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He studies bureaucratic politics and political behavior and devotes particular focus to law enforcement agencies and police-civilian interactions. His work explores several facets of policing, including how controversial tactics are deployed in time and space, how rules and procedures affect the nature and volume of police-civilian interactions, the role of race in police behavior, and how police tactics affect perceptions of law enforcement and crime.

He also conducts methodological research on issues relevant to his substantive work, including causal inference, statistical modeling and experimental design. His work exploits a range of research designs and data sources including field, natural, and survey experiments, qualitative interviews and administrative records obtained through public information requests to government agencies.

Prof. Mummolo’s research has appeared in American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Science, among other peer-reviewed journals. He received a B.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Before beginning his doctoral studies he was a staff writer at The Washington Post where he covered crime and politics in the Washington, D.C. region.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Barbara Buckinx

Migration is near the top of lists of citizens’ concerns, and across the world, governments and political parties are making names for themselves by championing restrictions on border crossing. Meanwhile, a small but increasing proportion of the world’s population – less than 4% in 2024 – are international migrants, and 117 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced. The war in Ukraine has led to Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, and there are ongoing emergencies with refugees and internally displaced persons in countries ranging from Bangladesh to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This research seminar will cover exterior and interior immigration control as well as the types and purposes of mobility, from employment migration to protection from persecution. It will pay particular attention to recent policy developments, such as border wall construction, deportation regimes, and the reception of climate migrants. The primary purpose of the seminar is to give students the necessary background and tools to produce independent research.

Barbara Buckinx (PhD, Princeton) is a Research Scholar in the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD) at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Prior to returning to Princeton, she held research fellowships at Brown University, Goethe University Frankfurt, and the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests lie in global governance, migration, refugees, and the environment. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Migration Studies, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, PS: Political Science & Politics, and Democratic Theory. She is co-chair of The Global Justice Network and a member of the Global Health Impact's Pandemic Health Equity Working Group. At LISD, she is the faculty director of the Ethics of Policy Fellowship Program, co-director of the Africa Program, and project lead for the projects on Global Governance, Environment and Migration, and Gender in the Global Community. 

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Meg Jacobs

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Americans voted Franklin Roosevelt into office. Roosevelt promised the country a “new deal” to combat the economic hardship millions were facing since the stock market crash of 1929.  The New Deal provided jobs, relief, a social safety net, electrification, labor rights, and more.  This seminar will explore the political and policy obstacles and accomplishments of the 1930s as a way of thinking about contemporary economic challenges. Students will learn about what succeeded and what failed nearly a century ago to shed light on current policy proposals. After learning about the New Deal, students will then design their own research question, using history as a lens through which to evaluate and better understand policy.

Meg Jacobs is a Senior Research Scholar in Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Babak Manouchehrifar

This seminar examines how religious values, spiritual practices, and secular principles influence public policies in both domestic and international contexts. Students will explore the complex interplay between faith, spirituality, and governance across a range of critical policy issues, including human rights, social justice, democracy, security, climate change, and development. The course analyzes how policymakers engage with diverse religious actors and institutions while navigating the challenges of crafting inclusive and effective public policies. Throughout the seminar, students will learn various theoretical and methodological approaches to studying religion and public policy through hands-on, interactive exercises that analyze real-world cases from both the United States and around the globe.

Some of the key questions students will address in this seminar include: How do religious and spiritual traditions influence policy debates and outcomes and with what consequences? How can policymakers balance the right to religious freedom with other civil liberties in pluralistic societies? How do approaches to religion and secularism differ across various cultural and policy settings? How to foster dialogue among diverse and seemingly incompatible worldviews in policymaking processes?

This seminar aims to equip students with the analytical tools necessary to critically engage with the complex intersections of faith, spirituality, secularism, and policy in our increasingly diverse, yet socially fractured national and global landscapes. Students will conduct original research on a specific topic of their choosing related to religion and public policy, using both primary and secondary sources. Students will also learn how to formulate a clear research question, conduct a literature review, collect and analyze data, and present their findings in a written paper and an oral presentation.

This course is designed for students from all backgrounds and identities, with no prior knowledge of religious studies required. The only prerequisite is a genuine interest in understanding the complex role of religion in public life and a commitment to crafting more inclusive and effective public policies amidst deep cultural and religious differences.

Babak Manouchehrifar is the Stewart Fellow at the Princeton University’s Humanities Council and a Princeton-Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. He holds a PhD in Urban Studies from MIT. His research examines how the tensions between religious traditions of urban communities and secular principles of urban governance shape the built environment and raise questions about social and spatial justice in both Western and non-Western societies.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Stacy Mann

In this seminar we will examine efforts over time and around the world to grapple with grievous systemic wrongs perpetrated against indigenous and peasant communities. Along the way we will consider lessons these distinct instances might offer towards a unified theory of repair. How might a comparative perspective help us understand and advance efforts in the US and elsewhere?

Colonialism, imperialism, enslavement, land theft, genocide, apartheid, exploitation and exclusion: History testifies loudly to human capacity for systemic cruelty. Recognizing that the consequences of systemic harm can never be undone, we will study struggles for reckoning, justice, repair, and in some cases transformation -- across time, place, modes of governance and jurisdictions. We will consider why claims by some aggrieved groups have found traction while others have been repeatedly thwarted. This requires paying close attention to grassroots organizing, diasporic movements and representation; to the role of states and transnational governing bodies; to racialized capitalism; and to fundamentalist movements and ideologies. In addition, we will take stock of the ways that language, popular culture, the media, and institutions including academia can strengthen (or quash) movements for repair. Each student will choose a case study and carry out a research agenda culminating in a final paper.

Anastasia Mann is a historian of the 20th and 21st Century US (PhD, Northwestern, 2003). Her teaching, writing, service and organizing focus on the systemic forces through which opportunity is manifest for some communities and blocked for others, as well as on the creative and energetic people-driven movements that challenge them.

Formerly a policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective, Mann was inaugural director of Rutgers University’s Program on Immigration and Democracy. Appointed by the governor to the first-ever New Jersey Commission on New Americans, Mann is inaugural director of SPIA in NJ which focuses on policy at the state and local level and connects SPIA to communities, advocates, and elected officials advancing democratic practice throughout the Garden State.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Arian Sharifi

This research seminar is an overview to the study of terrorism as used in the past, present and potentially future, employing both conceptual and practical frameworks. We will review all major aspects of terrorism, including (a) definitions and history of terrorism; (b) root causes of terrorism; (c)  the processes of radicalization, recruitment, and indoctrination of terrorists; (d) organizations, strategies, and tactics of terrorist groups; (e) support structure of terrorism; (f) gender, minorities and identity in terrorism; and (g) a typology of ideologically motivated terrorism, including Far-right, Far-left, ethno-nationalist, as well as religious terrorism.

The course pursues three main objectives: (1) equip students with a set of frameworks and tools to evaluate and understand past, present, and future threats of terrorism; (2) allow students to apply the analytical and methodological tools they learn in the Research Design course to the study of terrorism; and (3) enable students to produce independent research in their Junior Papers.

Dr. Arian Sharifi is a Lecturer and Co-chair of the Master in Public Policy Program at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He joined Princeton after a decade and a half of high-level practical experience in Afghanistan and internationally, having served in multiple positions in the former Afghan government, notably as Director General of National Threat Assessment in the Office of National Security Council, as well as a Senior Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kabul. At the international level, Sharifi worked as an Analyst for the Combatting Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point, and as Operations Research Analyst for the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, covering issues of security and terrorism in the Central and Southern Asia regions.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Andy Guess

How do social media platforms affect the health of societies? This seminar will explore topics at the intersection of digital media, politics, and public policy. We will cover practical and scholarly debates surrounding the regulation of social platforms, especially as they relate to pathologies such as health- and election-related misinformation, hate speech, and generative AI.

Topics may include the role of algorithms and curation in ranking content; the promise of labeling, fact-checking, and other interventions designed to reduce misinformation and polarization; and debates about “doomscrolling” and mental health. In the course of exploring these issues, students will learn about the challenges of studying social media through reading, discussing, and critically evaluating research on these topics. Students enrolled in this seminar will be expected to develop quantitative research designs to answer specific questions, and survey datasets will be provided to facilitate analysis.

Andy Guess (Ph.D. Columbia University) is an associate professor of politics and public affairs and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and political behavior.

Via a combination of experimental methods, large datasets, machine learning, and innovative measurement, he studies how people choose, process, spread, and respond to information about politics. Recent work investigates the extent to which online Americans' news habits are polarized (the popular "echo chambers" hypothesis), patterns in the consumption and spread of online misinformation, and the effectiveness of efforts to counteract misperceptions encountered on social media. Coverage of these findings has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other publications.

His research has been supported by grants from the Volkswagen Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the American Press Institute and published in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Nina Yancy

When you hear an American neighborhood described as “good” or “bad,” race is often lurking underneath. Why does the perception—and often the reality—of a place tend to differ based on the race of its residents? How did government policies (like redlining), market forces, and civil society help produce these differences? How does the legacy of segregation and the spaces it created (e.g., sensationalized Black ghetto, romanticized White suburb) inform contemporary policy debates? Is that legacy still relevant as metropolitan areas diversify and face new challenges like gentrification?

This seminar will examine the origins, severity, and implications of residential segregation by race across America’s cities and suburbs. We will explore how place has been “racialized” in the US; the relationship between segregation and inequality; the significance of both concentrated poverty and affluence; and potential strategies to address segregation’s harms. Throughout, we will discuss various methods in the study of race and place, such as interviews, case studies, survey research, and quantitative data analysis.

In their independent research, students will have the opportunity to investigate questions about the consequences of spatial inequality, the effectiveness of efforts to address it, the spatial dimensions of specific policy areas, and/or public opinion on related topics. Class discussions will focus on US metropolitan areas and emphasize the Black-White color line, but students are welcome to examine other contexts and lines of division in their junior papers.

Nina Yancy is a Lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Her research interests lie at the intersection of geography, politics, and prejudice in the US context. She is the author of How the Color Line Bends: The Geography of White Prejudice in Modern America (Oxford, 2022), which explores the relationship between where White Americans live and their opinions on racialized policies. She also brings to her teaching several years of consulting experience, having advised public- and social-sector organizations on topics including workforce/economic development, education and reskilling, and promoting racial equity.

Monday, 1:30-4:00 PM — Eric Tate

Water is a critical resource, essential for sustaining life, producing food and energy, facilitating transportation, and influencing geopolitics. Yet its availability and quality is facing growing threats from human activities and climate change. Through the lens of water sustainability, this course examines major contemporary issues related to water resources, and quantitative and spatial analysis methods employed to evaluate them.

The objective of the seminar is to provide the thematic background and analytical tools to produce your own research and document it in an academic-style paper. The course pairs research methodology with intersecting environmental, social and policy dimensions of water . We will learn about the major water-related challenge through readings, case studies, and discussion, as well as quantitative and spatial analysis methods.  Through instruction and independent research, you will build skills in research design, data collection, data analysis, and the writing process.  At the conclusion of the course, each student will have completed a junior paper that analyzes a water-related challenges and describes actionable solutions.

Eric Tate is a professor of public affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs. His research areas include flood hazards, social inequity, and water resources, using spatial indicators to explore interactions among society and environment that generate disasters. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Anthropocene Alliance; on the Resilient America Roundtable of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, & Medicine; as co-chair of the National Academies study committee on spatial screening tools for environmental justice; and as co-author of the Adaptation chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment. He is also an HMEI associated faulty member where he is affiliated with the Climate Futures Initiative for Science, Values and Policy, and the Grand Challenges Program.