Team directory

Professor of Political Science, Gregory Huber

Gregory Huber, Chair of the Political Science Department at Yale; Forst Family Professor of Political Science; Director, ISPS Behavioral Lab

Gregory Huber, Ph.D., Princeton University 2001, is the Forst Family Professor of Political Science, a resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of American Politics, and founding director of the ISPS Behavioral Research Lab.

Christopher Irsfeld, Yale College

CJ Irsfeld is a junior studying History with a concentration on social change and social movements. His research interests include the logistical challenges of rural infrastructure policy, the political relationships between progressivism and marginalized communities, and the history and development of farmer-labor movements. CJ works as the chief of staff to New Haven Alder Darryl Brackeen and coordinates the Dwight Hall Urban Fellows program, in addition to working on program and funding development with EMERGE Connecticut.

Sophie Jacobson, Graduate Student, Political Science

Sophie Jacobson is a PhD student in political science focusing on the politics of inequality in the United States. Her research centers on American social policy, incorporating historical institutionalist and comparative political economy approaches. Outside the US, Sophie studies the political economy of child poverty in OECD countries. As an ISPS Policy Fellow, she is conducting a political ethnography of single mothers in New Haven for insight into their perceptions and experiences of democratic governance.

Yuvraj Joshi,

Yuvraj Joshi is a doctoral candidate at the Yale Law School, where he studies as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow. His main areas of research include constitutional and comparative law, gender and sexuality law, family law, transitional justice, and critical perspectives on human rights. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, Yuvraj worked on a range of human and civil rights issues with organizations including Human Rights Watch, Lambda Legal, and UNAIDS. He holds law degrees from the Yale Law School and University College London and a bachelor of arts

Assistant Professor of Political Science Josh Kalla

Joshua Kalla, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Joshua Kalla is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley (2018). His research studies political persuasion, prejudice reduction, and decision-making among voters and political elites, primarily through the use of randomized field experiments.

Christina Kinane, Assistant Professor, Political Science

Christina M. Kinane is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Institution of Social and Policy Studies. Broadly, she studies the role of legislatures, executives, and the bureaucracy in policymaking. In particular, her current research examines how presidents strategically use vacancies in top appointments to promote their policy priorities within the framework of interbranch bargaining. Professor Kinane teaches courses on American politics and U.S. executive politics.

Director's Fellow Coordinator/Law School Student

Sam Kuhn, Co-Director of the Director's Fellows Program

Sam Kuhn is a second-year law student at Yale. Before YLS, Sam was a Field Adviser with the National Network for Safe Communities. At NNSC, he led a multi-city Department of Justice pilot police reform project called the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice and developed and implemented strategies to reduce urban gun violence and violence in prisons.

Navin Kumar,

Navin Kumar is currently a PhD student in the Sociology Department. He has used altruism to increase uptake of gonorrhea and chlamydia testing among gay and bisexual men in China. He also seeks to understand how social networks affect treatment retention and patient engagement among people receiving treatment for opioid use disorder, to better tailor services for people at higher risk of treatment failure. He is currently exploring the views of major organizations in the US legal cannabis space, to craft better cannabis policy.

Pam Lamonaca, Senior Administrative Assistant

Office Location: 89 Trumbull Street
Phone: 203-432-3234
Email: pamela.lamonaca@yale.edu

Joseph LaPalombara, Arnold Wolfers Professor Emeritus of Political Science; Professor Emeritus of Management

Joseph LaPalombara is the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and Management Emeritus, and a Senior Research Scholar in the Center for Comparative Research. He is a member of the American and the Connecticut Academies of Arts and Sciences, and has held fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Twentieth Century Fund, the Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright Program.