Below is an alphabetical list of Ph.D. students and recent graduates currently on the job market. Please feel free to contact them, their advisors, or the Director of Graduate Studies, Rikhil Bhavnani, for additional information.
Priyadarshi Amar
Ph.D. Candidate: Comparative Politics | Political Methodology
Email: pamar@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
Political Representation, Political Economy of Development, Local Governments, Electoral Quotas, Election Rules, Misinformation, Politics of South Asia
Dissertation Title
“Institutions and Political Representation in Local Governments”
References
Rikhil Bhavnani (co-chair), Laura Schechter (co-chair), Yoshiko Herrera, Simon Chauchard, Reed Lei, and Priya Mukherjee
Phillip Pinell
Ph.D. Candidate: Political Theory
Email: pinell@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
Iberian and Latin American Political Thought, Memory, Identity, Nationalism, Citizenship Studies, Liberalism/Illiberalism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
Dissertation Title
“Memory Politics: The Contested Past as an Aid to Liberty”
References
Richard Avramenko, Joshua Dienstag, Daniel Kapust, Michelle Schwarze
Khasan Redjaboev
Ph.D. Candidate: Comparative Politics | International Relations
Email: redjaboev@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
Dissertation Title
Communist Colonialism and Development: Building the State Patriarchy in Eurasia, 1870-2020
References
Rikhil Bhavnani, Yoshiko Herrera, Paul Castañeda Dower, Steven Brooke
Timothy Tennyson
Ph.D. Candidate: Political Theory | American Politics
Email: ttennyson@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
History of Political Thought, Civic Education and Citizenship, Modern and Contemporary Liberalism, Moral and Political Psychology
Dissertation Title
“Fostering Freedom: Judgment in Early-Modern Liberal Educational and Political Thought”
References
Richard Avramenko, Dan Kapust, Michelle Schwarze, Adam Nelson
X (Xunchao) Zhang
Ph.D. Candidate: International Relations
Email: x.zhang@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
International Security, Public Opinion, Revenge and Revanchism, Leaders, Intergroup Conflict, US foreign policy, Experimental Method
Dissertation Title
“Cycle Of Suffering, Spiral of Revenge: When Revenge Provokes―and When It Deters”
References
Recent Graduates on the Job Market
Dillon Laaker
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2024)
International Relations | Political Methodology
Email: laaker@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
Political economy, trade, immigration, international organizations, public opinion
Dissertation Title
“The Political Economy of Rules of Origin”
References
Jon Pevehouse (Chair), Mark Copelovitch, Lisa Martin
Jingyuan (Juan) Qian
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2023)
Comparative Politics | Political Methodology
Email: juan.qian@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
Authoritarian Political Institutions, Chinese Politics, Formal Theory
Dissertation Title
“Statebuilding by Campaign: Regime Consolidation, Bureaucratic Compliance, and Political Control in Modern China”
Noah Stengl
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2024)
Email: stengl@wisc.edu | Website | CV
Research Interests
American Political Thought, Indigenous Political Thought, Environmental Political Thought, Politics of the “Ordinary”
Dissertation Title
“The Meaning of Land in Nineteenth-Century American Political Thought”
References
Valeria Umanets
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2024)
Comparative Politics
Email: umanets@wisc.edu | Website | CV | Google Scholar
Research Interests
Gender and politics, representation, authoritarian politics, historical political economy, post-Communist states.
Dissertation Title
“Political Participation of Women in the Soviet Union and Russia: From State-Sponsored Feminism to Putin’s Machismo”
References
Chagai M. Weiss
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2022)
Comparative Politics | International Relations
Email: cmweiss3@wisc.edu | Website | Twitter | CV
Research Interests
Examining how institutions and the people within them shape intergroup relations in divided societies. He is also working on several projects examining the effects of scalable interventions for prejudice reduction, the electoral effects of conflict, the institutional origins of partisan polarization, and experimental methods.
Dissertation Title
“Prejudice Reduction at Scale: How Institutional Inclusion Reduces Social Exclusion”
References
Rikhil Bhavnani, Yoshiko Herrera, Nadav Shelef, Jonathan Renshon
Thomas Worth
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2024)
International Relations | American Politics
Email: worth3@stolaf.edu | CV | Website | Google Scholar
Research Interests
Gender and US politics; US foreign policy; feminist security studies; International Relations theory; masculinity and International Relations; the measurement of gender identity
Dissertation Title
“A War of Their Own: Masculinity, Femininity, and the Gender Gap in Support for War”
References
Awards
2023-2024 UW–Madison College of Letters and Sciences Capstone Teaching Award
Xinzhi Zhao
Ph.D. in Political Science (August 2024)
Political Theory | Comparative Politics
Email: xzhao322@wisc.edu | CV | Website
Research Interests
Modern Western political, social, and economic thought; Enlightenment political thought; political and social epistemology; moral psychology; knowledge and democracy; comparative political thought
Dissertation Title
“Another Path to Enlightenment: David Hume and Adam Smith on Philosophers and the Public”
References
Daniel Kapust, Michelle Schwarze, Howard Schweber, James Messina