Team directory

Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale University. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice, and the methods of social inquiry. A native of South Africa, he received his J.D. from the Yale Law School and his Ph.D from the Yale Political Science Department where he has taught since 1984 and served as chair from 1999 to 2004. Shapiro is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jody Sindelar, Professor of Epidemiology/Public Health and Economics

Dr. Sindelar is a professor of public health and a health economist at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and Immediate Past Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management within YSPH. In addition, she is a Research Associate at the National Bureau Economic Research, is a Research Fellow at IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor) an Associated Faculty at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale, and has been the President of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon).

Stephen Skowronek, Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political & Social Science

Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. He is currently the Wynant Visiting Professor at the Rothermere American Institute, Balliol College Oxford. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has held the Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Philip Smith, Professor of Sociology; Associate Director Center for Cultural Sociology

Philip Smith is responsible for a dozen books and over sixty articles and chapters. Most recently he is co-author of Incivility: The Rude Stranger in Everyday Life (Cambridge 2010). He is also author of Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, the Gulf War and Suez (Chicago, 2005), Punishment and Culture (Chicago, 2008). His textbook Cultural Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell 2001) has been translated into several languages and is now available in a second edition.

Isabela Snow, Dahl Scholar, 2024-2025

Isabela (she/her) is a sophomore from Minnesota studying political science and environmental studies. Under the guidance of Professor Michael Fotos, as a Dahl scholar she is running a comparative study between Minnesota and Iowa to understand the role of policy and levels of governance in mitigating agrochemical run-off in the upper Mississippi River.

Isabela’s other research interests include environmental policy, campaign finance, and the impact of U.S. foreign intervention on the move to a more sustainable world.

Dara Strolovitch, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Professor of American Studies and Political Science

Dara Z. Strolovitch is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; American Studies; and Political Science at Yale University, where her research and teaching focus on political representation, social movements, and the intersecting politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She received her B.A. in Political Science from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale. Before coming to Yale, she was Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University.

Patrick Sullivan, Postgraduate Associate

Patrick is a postgraduate 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.

Lisa Suter, Professor of Medicine (Internal Medicine); Director, Quality Measurement Program at the Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (CORE)

Lisa Gale Suter, M.D. is a Professor of Medicine in the Section of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, continuously board certified in both Internal Medicine and Rheumatology since 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Milan Svolik, Elizabeth S. & A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science

Milan Svolik is Elizabeth S. & A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research and teaching focus on comparative politics, political economy, and formal political theory.

He has authored and co-authored articles on the politics of authoritarian regimes and democratization in leading political science journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics.

Peter Swenson, C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science

Peter A. Swenson is Yale’s C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science. He specializes in the comparative political economy of labor markets and social welfare in Europe and the United States. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the economic, political and social foundations of social policy and market regulation in developed capitalist democracies.