People

DIRECTOR

Dan Gingerich is the director of the QC and Associate Professor of Politics. His research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of corruption and clientelism in Latin America as well as developing new methodologies to study these phenomena.  Gingerich has published articles in journals such as Political Analysis, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Economics and Politics, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics. He is the author of Political Institutions and Party-Directed Corruption in South America: Stealing for the Team (Cambridge University Press, series: Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions). He is on research leave during academic year 2016-2017.

STEERING COMMITTEE

POLITICS

Justin Kirkland is an associate professor of politics and policy at the University of Virginia where he specializes in American Politics. His research interests center on representation, legislative politics, state politics, and public opinion. He has published more than 30 peer reviewed articles in journals like American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics. He has also a coauthor of three books: The Illusion of Accountability: Transparency and Representation in American Legislatures (coauthored with Jeffrey Harden) published by Cambridge University Press, Indecision in American Legislatures (also coauthored with Jeffrey Harden) published by the University of Michigan Press and Roll Call Rebels (coauthored with Jonathan Slapin) published by Cambridge University Press. His research has won several disciplinary awards and been funded by the National Science Foundation. Justin is also the Co-Editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012.

ECONOMICS

Maxim Engers is a Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia.  He works in the economics of information and applications of game theory.   His published work has studied topics as diverse as sanctions in international relations, auctions to raise money for charitable purposes, and the role of the ordering of coauthors of academic papers in signifying their relative contributions.  He has taught at the University of Strasbourg in France, the University of New South Wales in Australia and the University of Cape Town in South Africa and has served as a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a consultant for the World Bank in Washington D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and undergraduate degrees from the University of Cape Town in Economics, Mathematics, Mathematical Statistics and Computer Science.

Sheetal Sekhri

Email: ssekhri@virginia.edu

SOCIOLOGY

Adam Slez is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. His research lies at the intersection of historical and political sociology. His work addresses questions related to the evolution of electoral politics in the United States, incorporating incorporate spatial and relational data analysis along with more traditional forms of historical inquiry in an effort to help explain political action as a contextually-specific practice.

STATISTICS

Dan Spitzner is Associate Professor of Statistics. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include high dimensional inference, functional data analysis, and shrinkage estimation.