Women, Men & US Politics

Widely known as an expert in gender in politics, Jennifer Lawless took the ultimate step in political participation by running for Congress in 2006 in Rhode Island. That experience inspired her to show her students that civic engagement is critical for a healthy democracy. Jen is the Commonwealth professor of politics at the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the UVA faculty, she was a professor of government at American University and the director of the Women & Politics Institute. Before that, she was an assistant and then associate professor at Brown. Her research focuses on political ambition, campaigns and elections, and media and politics. She is the author or coauthor of six books, including Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era (with Danny Hayes) and It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (with Richard L. Fox). Her research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, has appeared in numerous academic journals, and is regularly cited in the popular press. She is an associate editor of the American Journal of Politics Science and holds an appointment as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Jen graduated from Union College with a BA in political science, and Stanford University with an MA and PhD in political science. Richard Fox has spent decades teaching Intro American Government to students that have become less and less engaged by traditional approaches. He teaches in the areas of U.S. Congress, elections, and media and politics at Loyola Marymount University. His research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on political ambition, electoral behavior, and gender politics. He is the coeditor of Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics, 5th edition (Cambridge University Press, 2021)). He is also the coauthor of Women, Men, and U.S. Politics: 10 Big Questions (W. W. Norton, 2017); Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned Off to Politics (Oxford University Press, 2015); It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Tabloid Justice: The Criminal Justice System in the Age of Media Frenzy, 2nd edition (Lynne Rienner, 2007). His work has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Political Psychology, PS, and Politics & Gender. He has also published op-eds in the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College, he earned his MA and PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara.