​​
​Ph.D. Candidate​
Department of Political Science
MIT

jenglish@mit.edu

Welcome!
 
I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at MIT, where I am affiliated with the Global Diversity Lab and the MIT GOV/LAB. 

I study American and Comparative politics with a focus on racial diversity, political violence, and political participation.  Methodologically, I am interested in the synergies between interpretive and positivist methodologies.

My main strand of research investigates the conditions under which groups manage to deliberate and pursue political action in the presence of deep divisions. My dissertation, Dilemmas of Accommodation: How Diversity Undermines Deliberation and Political Action in Congregations, uses ethnographic and statistical methods to probe this question in racially diverse churches in the United States. This research is generously supported by an NSF/APSA Dissertation Improvement Grant. You can find a summary of this research here.

I am also interested in political violence and have taken up questions related to the study of violence with co-authors. Some recent and working papers include "The Politics of Sight" (with Bernardo Zacka), and "How Police Behavior Frames Protests" (with Ariel White and Laurel Eckhouse).

My research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, and has been supported by APSA, MIT GOV/LAB, and the Office of the Provost at MIT.

I received my B.A. from UCLA, where I graduated summa cum laude with degrees in Political Science and Economics. I am a proud (and happily retired) former member of the UCLA Rowing Team, and was UCLA's Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2018. I was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland.