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.

Duha T. Altindag, a native of Turkey, completed his doctoral studies in economics at Louisiana State University. He also obtained a bachelor of arts in business administration from Bogazici University, and a master of science in economics from Louisiana State University. His research interests include economic analysis of crime, health knowledge, happiness, and consequences of joblessness. In general, he conducts research in applied econometrics, law and economics, health economics and labor economics.

Cynthia Bowling joined the faculty at Auburn in 1998 after earning her PhD in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her time at Auburn, she has previously served the Department of Political Science as faculty, director of the Master in Public Administration program, director of the joint PhD program in public administration and public policy, and chair of the department. Her research primarily focuses on state government administration, public budgeting, and representative bureaucracy. Additionally, Bowling served as the co-director of the American State Administrators Project in 2004 and 2008, as well as the co-editor of Publius’ State of American Federalism 2012- 2016. In her role as associate dean, Bowling is responsible for faculty research efforts and grants, faculty development, and tenure and promotion processes.

Mitchell Brown, Ph.D., is the Curtis O. Liles III Professor of Political Science at Auburn University, the Director of the Institute for Election Administration Research & Practice (a collaboration of the Election Center and Auburn University), and is a founding editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice. She is widely published, and her work as a researcher, evaluator, trainer and consultant focuses on applied projects around the country centering on election administration, community-based problem solving, and democratic engagement. She serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Election Officials (the Election Center) and has also held board and leadership positions at the university, in state government, and in non-profit organizations.

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.

Brandon Fincher is the managing editor of the "Journal of Election Administration, Research, and Practice" and serves as an adjunct instructor for Auburn University's Political Science Department. He is a graduate of Auburn's public administration and public policy doctoral program. HIs research specializes in election policy diffusion and decision-making, particularly in the area of voter registration. He has designed and led the professional development of Alabama voter registrars in cooperation with the Alabama Secretary of State's Office, taught Election Administration courses at the graduate level, and assisted with research for the book "Administering Elections: How Elections Work" and the white paper "Election Official and Poll Worker Recruitment, Training, and Retention" for the MIT Election Data and Science Laboratory's Mapping Election Administration and Election Science project.

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.

Janet Jock is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. Her research agenda explores the quality, performance, and impact of social service provision by both governmental and non-governmental organizations, particularly related to recipient health and education outcomes. She also uses theoretically and empirically based evidence to understand how managerial and institutional factors impact performance and how service providers engage with recipients and involve them in decision-making and coordination of services. She has conducted research in both US and non-US contexts.

Pëllumb Kelmendi is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. His research focuses on civil wars, international peacekeeping, and post-conflict institution building. His current teaching assignments include courses on global politics and international security. Prior to joining Auburn, Kelmendi was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. He received his PhD from Brown University.

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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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. Her research is published at Political Analysis, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, and College Teaching.

Alan Seals is a labor economist. Seals teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in labor economics and econometrics at Auburn. He is a native of Grundy County, Tennessee, and did both his undergraduate and graduate work at Middle Tennessee State University. His current research uses large-scale field experiments to analyze the transition from school to work. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on the economics of the family and the economics of crime. His research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Bloomberg Politics, and The Grundy County Herald. Seals is an active member of the American Economic Association, Southern Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists.

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.

Peter White is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. He received his PhD in international relations and comparative politics from the University of Maryland in 2016. His research interests include civil-military relations, military organizations, and the management and prevention of armed conflict. His research has appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Journal of Politics, International Organization, The British Journal of Political Science, Security Studies, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, and The Journal of Peace Research. He teaches courses on global issues, politics and comparative civil-military relations.