Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her co-author, Lauren Santoro of the University of Texas at Dallas, published their article “Blind Trust, Blind Skepticism: Liberals’ & Conservatives’ Response to Academic Research” in American Politics Research. The article shows that individuals make assumptions about the ideological position of different major U.S. universities, and their likelihood of believing political (or politicized) research produced at those universities is dependent on whether their own ideological positions “match” those of the institution.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her coauthor, Emily Pears (Associate Professor, Claremont McKenna College), received the 2023 John Kincaid Best Article Award from the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association for their article “The Correlates and Characteristics of American State Identity.” They are currently extending the arguments made in the article into a book-length manuscript.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her 2022 SCOPE students, Andrew Parker ’23, Adelaide Armen ’24, and Abigail Skelton ’25, presented their paper, “The Effects of Protest Coverage on American Attitudes,” at the Midwest Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Sydnor also presented her paper, “50 Nifty United States? Understanding Variation in State Identity Across America,” which is co-authored with Emily Pears (Claremont McKenna College) and served as a panel chair. Political science student Megan Kelly ’23 presented her honors project, “Effects of Defense Mechanisms on Contentious Political Discussions,” as part of an undergraduate poster session at the conference.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and Sr. Director of Integrative and Community-Engaged Learning Sarah Brackmann co-presented at AACU’s Annual Meeting. Their presentation, “Building a Campus-Wide Integrated Voter Engagement Effort,” highlighted Southwestern’s success in building and institutionalizing a voter registration, education, and engagement program that spans the student experience.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor, Emily Tesmer ’20, and Breely Peterson ’20 published an article titled “Confronting Politics: The Role of Conflict Orientation in Shaping Political Debate” in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy.