Shana Kushner Gadarian Named Maxwell School’s Associate Dean for Research

August 29, 2023

Shana Kushner Gadarian

Political Science Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

Promotions & Appointments

In her new role, Gadarian will help students and faculty develop their research projects and secure funding to advance scholarly pursuits.

Shana Kushner Gadarian

Shana Kushner Gadarian has been appointed the incoming associate dean for research at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. A member of the school’s faculty since 2011, she is professor and chair of political science and the Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking.

Gadarian will step down as chair of political science when she begins the new role on Jan. 1, 2024.

As associate dean, Gadarian will oversee the school’s growing research portfolio, creating the infrastructure to support faculty and student research and helping them as they seek internal and external funding opportunities. Maxwell faculty, including Gadarian, are regularly supported with fellowships, Fulbright awards and funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“Professor Gadarian is a highly accomplished scholar, instructor and devoted mentor,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke. “She is collegial, collaborative and inclusive. She has a passion for evidence-based work that can inform policy and decision making. She also has extensive experience and success with navigating research and funding opportunities from a wide range of organizations. These attributes and many more make her extremely well-qualified for this position. I am pleased to welcome her to this position and confident she will amplify the impact of our outstanding researchers.”

Gadarian, who received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2008, researches American politics and public opinion, with a recent focus on the pandemic. She has received support for her work from the Russell Sage Foundation, the NSF, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and numerous other organizations.

“We have extremely engaging scholars at Maxwell, and I look forward to finding ways to share their work within our Maxwell and University communities, and to a wide external audience.”

Shana Kushner Gadarian

professor of political science and incoming associate dean for research

In 2021, she was awarded a prestigious Carnegie Fellowship, the so-called “brainy award,” that supported the research for her co-authored book “Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID” (Princeton University Press, 2022). With generous support from the Carnegie Foundation, Gadarian continues to study the impact of the pandemic on partisanship.

An earlier co-authored book, “Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World” (Cambridge University Press, 2015) received two awards from the American Political Science Association: The 2016 Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology and the 2020 Doris Graber Award for best book in political communication in the past decade.

Andrew S. London, professor of sociology, is stepping down from the associate dean for research position to serve as Maxwell’s associate dean for Washington programs, to which he was appointed in June. He will oversee year-round academic programs for Maxwell’s D.C. headquarters at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where Maxwell serves approximately 200 undergraduate, graduate and midcareer executive students each year.

Gadarian will continue to teach MAX 201: Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences and maintain her affiliations. She is a senior research associate in the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health and a research affiliate in the Center for Policy Research.

“I’m excited for this new opportunity,” says Gadarian. “It will better enable me to help faculty and students find research opportunities and support research that can inform policymakers and help serve the public. We have extremely engaging scholars at Maxwell, and I look forward to finding ways to share their work within our Maxwell and University communities, and to a wide external audience.”

By Jessica Youngman