Adriane Stewart Fresh

Adriane Stewart Fresh is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. She holds a PhD in Political Science and MA in Economics from Stanford University (2017) and a BA from New York University. Her research focuses on political economy, institutional change, and the interplay between elites and economic shifts, spanning historical contexts like Industrial Britain and modern U.S. electoral systems. She explores topics such as elite persistence, carceral state dynamics, and voting rights through quantitative methods.

Key research outputs include studies on Britain’s overseas trade impact on political elites, racial disparities in U.S. punitive public opinion, and the consequences of polling place changes on voter behavior. Her work has been funded by the NSF, Duke Endowment, and others. Teaching includes graduate methods courses and undergraduate seminars on political institutions. She has advised numerous PhD, MA, and honors thesis students.

Recognition includes Duke’s Top 5% Instructional Award (2020, 2021) and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She has collaborated on projects ranging from historical political economy to modern electoral reforms, often integrating archival data and computational methods.