معرفی
Ariel White is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is affiliated with the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. She is a prominent researcher in voting and voting rights, race, the criminal legal system, and bureaucratic behavior. White coordinates the Global Diversity Lab Summer Research Program (Pathways@GDL), which aims to broaden the pipeline into U.S. political science PhD programs.
White's research focuses on how potential voters react to experiences with punitive government policies, such as incarceration and immigration enforcement, and how people can make their way back into political life after these experiences. Her work uses large datasets to measure individual-level experiences and shed light on people's everyday interactions with government. She has examined how local election officials treat constituents of different ethnicities, how media shapes public conversations, and whether parties face electoral penalties when nominating minority candidates. Her research has revealed important insights about voter disenfranchisement, particularly how even brief jail spells can demobilize potential voters.
White's publications span multiple subfields including voting rights, criminal justice impacts on political participation, and bureaucratic behavior in election administration. Her work demonstrates consistent methodological rigor through large-scale administrative data analysis and field experiments. She has published in top journals including the American Political Science Review, Science, and the Journal of Politics.
- Heinz Eulau award for best paper in APSR 2015
White actively mentors students through the Global Diversity Lab Summer Research Program, providing research experience to promising undergraduate and master's students who might not otherwise consider graduate study in political science. Her research has been supported by various grants from the Center for International Studies and the Global Diversity Lab under Evan Lieberman's leadership. She has developed innovative approaches to helping formerly incarcerated individuals navigate voter registration processes.
She is affiliated with the Global Diversity Lab at MIT, where she works with colleagues to create opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to engage in political science research. Her recent work includes examining how social networks can help previously incarcerated individuals re-engage with the political system.
