Faculty Advisory Committee

Paul Pierson

John Gross Professor of Political Science
Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Pierson’s teaching and research includes the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. His most recent books are Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (with Jacob Hacker), Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis, The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism (co-edited with Theda Skocpol), and Winner...

Amy E. Lerman

Professor of Public Policy and Political Science
Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science
Goldman School of Public Policy
Possibility Lab

Professor Amy E. Lerman is a political scientist who studies issues of race, public opinion, and political behavior, especially as they relate to punishment and social inequality in America. She is the author of two books on the American criminal justice system—The Modern Prison Paradox and Arresting Citizenship (awarded a best book award from the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association). Her most recent book, Good Enough for Government Work, which was awarded both the Woodrow Wilson Award and the Gladys Kammerer Award from the American Political Science...

Nicholas Vargas

Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies
Department of Ethnic Studies

I am an Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department Ethnic Studies. I am fortunate to co-lead the Latinxs and Democracy Cluster at UCB and serve as Faculty Co-Director of the UCB Latino Social Science Pipeline Initiative (LSSPI), both of which aim to advance Latinx social science scholarship and strengthen academic pipelines.

My research is situated primarily in the social sciences with foci on...

Sarah Anzia

Associate Professor of Political Science & Public Policy
Sarah Anzia studies American politics with a focus on state and local government, elections, interest groups, political parties, and public policy. Her book, Timing and Turnout: How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups, examines how the timing of elections can be manipulated to affect both voter turnout and the composition of the electorate, which, in turn, affects election outcomes and public policy. She also studies the role of government employees and public-sector unions in elections and policymaking in the U.S. In addition, she has written about the politics of public pensions,...

Omar Wasow

Assistant Professor of Political Science
Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science

Omar Wasow is an Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics and statistical methods. His paper on the political consequences of the 1960s civil rights movement was published in the American Political Science Review. His co-authored work on estimating causal effects of race was published in the Annual Review of Political Science. Before joining the academy, Omar was the co-founder of BlackPlanet.com. Under his leadership, BlackPlanet.com became the leading site for African Americans, reaching over three...

Stephanie Zonszein

Assistant Professor of Political Science
Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science

I study the politics of immigration in advanced industrial societies, with a focus on the behavior of immigrants and native-born, the policies which aim to shape immigrant integration, and the reactions to those policies. One strand of my research considers what can be achieved by non-assimilationist policies — that is, policies that either remove structural barriers to integration without imposing cultural ones or that make specific accommodations for cultural diversity. These are some of the research questions that motivate this strand of work: Can immigrants enter mainstream...

Christian Paiz

Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies
Department of Ethnic Studies

Broadly speaking, I am a twentieth-century U.S. labor historian with interests in transnational migration, social movements, and history methods. In my first book, titled The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement (UNC Press, 2023), I studied how farmworkers in Southern California’s Coachella Valley (men, women, migrants, residents, Filipino and Mexican) envisioned their...

Jovan Lewis

Professor of Human Geography; Founder/Director
Department of Geography
Berkeley Black Geographies Project

Jovan Scott Lewis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-leads the Economic Disparities research cluster in Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. He received his PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics. Jovan’s research is concerned with the articulations of racialized poverty, which he examines through questions of racial capitalism, underdevelopment, and radical terms of repair. He has conducted research in Jamaica on these topics, which culminated in his monograph, Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black...

Gabriel Lenz

Professor of Political Science
Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science

Gabriel Lenz is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies democratic accountability, focusing on how to help voters hold their politicians accountable and how governments can protect people from violence and incarceration. He has published a book on elections with the University of Chicago Press and has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and other journals.

Cybelle Fox

Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology

Cybelle Fox received a B.A. in history and economics from UC San Diego in 1997 and a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007. Her main research interests include race and ethnic relations, the American welfare state, immigration, historical sociology, and political sociology. Her most recent book, Three Worlds of Relief (Princeton University Press, 2012), compares the incorporation of blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants in the American welfare system from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Fox won six book awards for Three Worlds of Relief,...