Joseph A. Aistrup, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Political Science. He served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University from 2013-2021. He came to Auburn from Kansas State University where he was associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He began his tenure at Kansas State in 2002 as associate professor and head of the Department of Political Science. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fort Hays State in 1982, a master’s from Virginia Tech in 1984, and PhD from Indiana University in 1989.

Mitchell Brown, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University and is an associate editor of the Journal of Political Science Education (Science of Teaching and Learning), and a founding editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice. Her broader research agenda focuses on the empowerment efforts of marginalized communities, which she pursues through applied research. She is the author and co-author of numerous books, research articles, and reports, including How We Vote: Innovations in American Elections, The Future of Election Administration, Administering Elections: How American Elections Work, and Applied Research Methods in Public and Non-Profit Organizations. From 2015-2018 she served as the director of Auburn University PhD Program in Public Administration and Public Policy and currently co-directs the Election Administration Initiative with Kathleen Hale. She also serves as curricular faculty for the National Association of Election Officials and a member of their board of directors.

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Steve Brown has taught at Auburn University since 1998 and in the CERA program since 2001.   At Auburn he teaches several courses in American Constitutional Law as well as Religion and Politics, Law and Society, and Introduction to American Government.  His research interests focus primarily on church and state issues and American legal history. In 2005, his book, Trumping Religion: The New Christian Right, The Free Speech Clause and the Courts received the National Communication Association's Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression. In 2006, he received the National Faculty of the Year Award from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.  His article “The Girard Will and Twin Landmarks of Supreme Court History” received the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2017 Hughes-Gossett Senior Prize, which was presented by Chief Justice John Roberts. His traveling museum exhibit about landmark Supreme Court cases from Alabama toured the state during the 2019 bicentennial of Alabama statehood and was a finalist for the American Bar Association’s 2020 Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts.  His latest book, Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation, received the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize for best book in Southern history.

Jon is an Associate Professor within the Division of Public Affairs and Director of the Master of the Public Policy program at the University of Utah. Prior to Utah, he was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. He teaches courses in Public Personnel Management, Leadership and Ethics, and Organizational Theory and Administrative Behavior. He is also the Chair of the American Society of Public Administration’s Section on Environment and Natural Resource Administration, the Faculty Advisor to the Auburn University International City and County Management Association (ICMA) Student Chapter, a member of ICMA’s graduate advisory board, and the MPA program’s internship supervisor. Before coming to Auburn, he served as a research associate with the League of Kansas Municipalities and worked with local government leaders across Kansas.

Jon’s broader research agenda focuses largely on state and local policy adoption and implementation as well as in building effective intergovernmental partnerships and inclusive organizations. Recent research has examined compliance, state energy/environmental policies, state-local policy conflicts, policy innovation, and diversity and inclusion. His work has been published by Taylor and Francis, the University of Pittsburgh Press, the American Review of Public Administration, Energy Policy, State and Local Government Review, Risk, Hazards, and Crises in Public Policy, Public Integrity, Society and Natural Resources, Politics and Policy, and Review of Policy Research. Policy blogs associated with the London School of Economics, the International City and County Management Association, and the American Society of Public Administration have also featured his work.

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Lindsey Forson is a Part-time Instructor of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University.  She currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of the National Association of Secretaries of State where she supports state election offices. Lindsey received her PhD in Public Administration and Public Policy from Auburn University in 2020. She has conducted research on intergovernmental relations, security, and emergency preparedness in US Election Administration. Her dissertation focused on the capacity of local election offices to address cybersecurity challenges. Lindsey's other professional experience includes congressional affairs, education, and association leadership.

Spencer Goidel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. He received his PhD from the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University, and BA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Spencer studies public opinion, voting behavior, elections, and political communication. His research investigates how political institutions, objective conditions, subjective evaluations, the media, and communication technologies shape the behaviors and attitudes of American voters. Currently, Spencer is interested in how partisan realignment is shaping voting behavior and public opinion.

Kathleen Hale, PhD, is a professor of political science at Auburn University where she directs its Election Administration Initiative and Graduate Program in Election Administration. She teaches courses in election administration, qualitative methods, and intergovernmental relations, and her research examines how to improve capacity of government and nonprofit organizations to address public problems. Hale also directs Auburn’s partnership with The Election Center (National Association of Election Officials) to professionalize the public administration of elections through its national certification program. 

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COMING SOON

Soren Jordan, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University. Dr. Jordan’s broader research agenda focuses on understanding how increases in party conflict broadly affect governance. In particular, Dr. Jordan wants to understand how and why party conflict has increased over time, how it changes individual approval of governing institutions, and how it affects the public dialogue over novel policy agenda items. He also researches statistical approaches to inference in political science. His current election-related research focuses on a variety of related topics, including trust in elections, threats to elections, and election information and disinformation. Dr. Jordan received his PhD and BA from the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He previously served as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University.

Bridgett A. King, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Current overarching themes in her scholarship include the administrative structure of felony disenfranchisement and its effect on participation and representation, citizen confidence in electoral outcomes, and the consequences of administrative discretion on voter experiences and democratic representation. She also works on interdisciplinary projects that apply systems and architectural engineering approaches to the field of election administration to address challenges associated with administrative decision-making and voter experiences. As an extension of this work, she has an expanding research agenda that considers how citizens engage in and view democratic participation in Liberia. Lastly, she regularly contributes to the broader elections community by speaking to domestic and international audiences about election administration and participating in domestic and international election observation.

Kelly Ann Krawczyk, PhD, teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on a wide range of nonprofit topics, including nonprofit law and governance, nonprofit management, and international nongovernmental organizations. She also teaches graduate courses in public administration in the MPA and PhD programs. She currently serves as the PhD program director.

Krawczyk’s research focuses on the relationship between civil society and democratic governance. She is specifically interested in how civil society impacts political behavior. She also conducts research in the areas of civic engagement, and facets of local democratic governance including corruption, accountability, service delivery, and decentralization. Her research has been published in journals of public administration, civil society, and local governance, including Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Local Government Studies, and the International Journal of Public Administration. She has also authored book chapters, as well as governmental and professional publications for the Governance Commission of Liberia and the World Bank.

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Dean Logan is the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County, California -- the nation's largest, most diverse local election jurisdiction serving more than 5.6 million registered voters. He has served in the position since 2008. In addition to election administration, his office records real property documents; maintains vital records; performs civil marriage ceremonies; and processes business filings serving an estimated 3,500 customers daily.

Mr. Logan holds degrees in Organizational Leadership from Azusa Pacific University and a Master of Public Administration from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He is a past-President and Board Member of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO), a member of the Board of Directors for the Election Center (National Association of Election Officials), serves on the advisory board of the Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), and the Board of Advisors for the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Mr. Logan sits on Advisory Boards for the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, Auburn University's Graduate Certificate in Election Administration, University of California Riverside's Design Thinking Executive Program, and the California State University, Northridge Master of Public Administration Program where he teaches courses on Organizational Leadership, Public Sector Management, Strategic Management, and Intergovernmental Relations.
 

Robert Montjoy, PhD, retired as research professor and Deblois Chair, University of New Orleans (2018) and as professor and Assistant Vice President for University Outreach, Auburn University (2004). He has studied elections since 1967 and has worked directly with elections officials in a variety of capacities. Robert represented AU in the founding of CERA and is its longest serving instructor.  He served 15 years on the Election Center Board of Directors, is a member of the Election Center Hall of Fame, and now serves on the board of the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center.

John C. Morris is a professor of political science at Auburn University, and has previously served on the faculties of Mississippi State University and Old Dominion University.  His research and teaching interests include collaboration, public-private partnerships, water policy, federalism, and organization theory.  To date he has published twelve books, over 130 scholarly articles and book chapters, delivered more than one hundred conference papers, and is the recipient of several teaching and mentoring awards. 

Kal Munis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. His research primarily centers on American politics, with emphases in civic engagement, political psychology, political communication, political geography, and electoral campaigns. ​His peer-reviewed work has been published by or is forthcoming at Environmental Politics, Political Behavior, Political Geography, Political Research Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Prevention Science, American Politics Research, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. He has also contributed commentary and analysis to the Washington Post, The Hill, National Public Radio, Democracy Journal, Washington Monthly, Reason, The Niskanen Center, and The Brookings Institute, among other outlets. Previously, Kal was an Assistant Professor at Utah Valley University, Faculty Fellow at the Gary R. Herbert Institute for Public Policy, Federalism Fellow at UVU's Center for Constitutional Studies, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Johns Hopkins University, a Presidential Predoctoral Fellow in Data Science at the Data Science Institute of the University of Virginia, member of Dr. Gerald Clore's Emotion and Cognition Lab, a fellow in the Quantitative Collaborative at UVa, and an editorial assistant at the American Journal of Political Science (methodology subfield). He earned my PhD from the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia in 2020, and earned my MA and BA in political science at the University of Montana.

Zoe Nemerever is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. Her research focuses on representation during the policymaking process, with emphases on state-level policymaking and rural constituencies. My research is published at Political Analysis, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, and College Teaching.

Dr. Donovan A. Watts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. Dr. Watts’ research interests include American Politics, Black politics, racial and ethnic politics, political behavior, and political socialization. His book project examines how the racialization of American politics has uniquely shaped the political attitudes and policy preferences of Black millennials.