Postdoctoral Fellows

Antonin Lacelle-Webster

External Postdoctoral Associate

Antonin Lacelle-Webster is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Democratic Innovations Program at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of British Columbia in 2023. His research focuses primarily on democratic theory, with a particular interest in democratic innovation, political agency, and the politics of hope and disappointment. He is also involved with Participedia as a member of the Democratic Representation research cluster and the Editorial Board.

Mackenzie Lockhart

Postdoctoral Associate

Mackenzie Lockhart is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Democratic Innovations program at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego in 2023. His research focuses on elections, representation, and public opinion with particular focus on how voters behave in American elections and consequences for representation.

Alexander Love

Postdoctoral Associate

Alexander Love is a Democratic Innovations Postdoctoral Associate at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS). He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, he earned his M.A. in Political Science from UNC and his B.A. in Public Policy and Data Analytics from William & Mary.

Itay Machtei

Postdoctoral Associate

Itay Machtei is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Consortium on the American Political Economy (CAPE) based at the ISPS’s American Political Economy eXchange (APEX) program. He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2025.

Mellissa Meisels

Postdoctoral Associate

Mellissa Meisels is a postdoctoral associate in ISPS’s Center for the Study of American Politics. In 2025, she will join Yale’s Department of Political Science as an assistant professor. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, where she was affiliated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Previously, she was a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar at the University of Rochester and earned her B.A.

Shir Raviv

External Postdoctoral Associate (Columbia University)

Shir Raviv is a political scientist who studies the politics of using AI in public policy implementation. She employs experimental methods to investigate how citizens perceive and react to the use of data-driven algorithms in high-stakes domains such as criminal justice, policing, welfare, and education. She also examines how their views change after receiving information or having personal experience with the technology. Before joining Columbia University in September 2023, Dr. Raviv earned her Ph.D. and M.A.

Patrick Sullivan

Postdoctoral Associate

Patrick is a postdoctoral associate at ISPS’s American Political Economy eXchange (APEX), a PhD candidate at the University of Konstanz, and an associated researcher at “The Politics of Inequality” Research Cluster at the University of Konstanz. His research interests include tax policy, economic inequality, and redistributive preferences. Patrick holds a bachelor’s degree in secondary education social studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also majored in history, political science, and economics.

Klaudia Wegschaider

Postdoctoral Associate

Klaudia Wegschaider joins the Institution for Social and Policy Studies as a Democratic Innovations postdoctoral associate. Her work focuses on the causes and consequences of electoral reforms, especially enfranchisement. Methodologically, she is primarily a qualitative researcher and combines case studies with quantitative and experimental methods.

Itamar Yakir

Postdoctoral Associate

Itamar Yakir is a postdoctoral sssociate with the Democratic Innovations program at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies and with Yale’s Identity and Conflict Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2023.