DEMOCRACY FUND VOTER STUDY GROUP - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Candidate & Project Developer
Aaron Rudkin is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UCLA. He is originally from Newfoundland, Canada, where he worked as a programmer and system administrator before attending graduate school. His methodological interests include reproducibility and open science; causal inference; text as data; and social data scraping. His substantive interests include legislative institutions in the U.S. and other democracies; ideology among political elites; legislator position-taking; and message transmission. He has past degrees from University of Ottawa and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Aaron and his wife enjoy Korean barbecue, indoor gardening, and trivia.
Job Titles:
- Student & Project Manager
Alex Rossell Hayes is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at UCLA where he studies comparative political institutions and behavior with a focus on immigration and radical populism. His work has been published in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, and Regional Labor Review. In 2017, Alex developed and implemented a U.S. Civics curriculum at the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead, NY, where he also taught English classes. Alex earned multiple B.A. degrees at Hofstra University in political science, economics, and public policy & public service before starting graduate work at UCLA. He is a native of Baltimore, MD, a language geek, and a very amateur musician and composer.
Job Titles:
- Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Principal Investigator
- Vice Chair
Chris Tausanovitch is an associate professor of political science and vice chair of the UCLA Political Science department. He is a recipient of the American Political Science Association's Congressional Fellowship and a former staffer on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. He is the principal investigator, with Chris Warshaw, of The American Ideology Project, an effort to characterize the political liberalism/conservatism of states, congressional districts, cities, state legislative districts, counties, and voters by building a 275,000-person super-survey of Americans. His work on democracy and representation has been published in The American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis, among other outlets.
Job Titles:
- Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
Job Titles:
- Candidate & Project Coordinator
Derek Holliday is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at UCLA where he studies representation in state and local politics and the nationalization of political behavior. His methodological interests include text-as-data and machine learning applications in social science. Prior to his graduate studies, Derek earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Rice University in Houston, TX, and worked as a contractor for the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. He grew up just outside Seattle, WA, and enjoys mountain/ultra-running, fantasy baseball, and a good cup of coffee.
Job Titles:
- Ethics and Public Policy Center
Job Titles:
- the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
Job Titles:
- Public Religion Research Institute ( PRRI )
Tyler Thomas Reny was a former project coordinator for Nationscape (2019-2020) and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his Ph.D. in political science at UCLA in 2020. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial attitudes in American politics and has been published in the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Psychology, Comparative Political Studies, and Political Research Quarterly, among others. Before graduate school, Tyler worked at New American Leaders, a New York City based non-profit that trains first- and second-generation immigrants to run for public office. He earned a B.A. at Skidmore College in political science and Spanish and an M.A. from the University of Washington. He grew up in Mid-Coast Maine and enjoys fancy cocktails, cooking, and eating delicious food.