Katherine Krimmel headshot

Katherine Krimmel

Assistant Professor

Department

Political Science

Office

1103 Milstein Center

Contact

CV

Katherine Krimmel joined the Barnard faculty in 2016, after spending three years in the political science department at Boston University. Her substantive research and teaching interests include political parties, public opinion and representation, American political development, and polarization. Methodologically, she is interested in applying new tools for data management, analysis, and visualization to the study of politics and history. 

Her work has been published in American Politics ResearchHarvard Business ReviewLegislative Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Studies in American Political Development. She won the Hahn-Sigelman Prize for the best article published in American Politics Research in 2017, and recently received a 2021-2022 Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. Her book, Divergent Democracy: How Policy Positions Came to Dominate Party Competition, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives).

  • Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A., Columbia University
  • B.S., Northwestern University

  • Political parties
  • Public opinion and representation
  • American political development
  • Polarization
  • Fiscal politics

  • American Political Parties 
  • American Political Development 
  • Gender and Public Policy 
  • Public Opinion and American Democracy (in connection with the cross-university consortium on Democratic Erosion)
  • Public Opinion and Representation 

  • 2021-2022 American Postdoctoral Fellowship, American Association of University Women 
  • 2018 Hahn-Sigelman Prize for the best paper published in American Politics Research in 2017
  • Nomination, 2014 E. E. Schattschneider Award for the best dissertation in American government, American Political Science Association
  • National Fellow, The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 2012-2013
  • Mellon Graduate Fellow, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University, 2012-2013
  • Teaching and Faculty Fellowships, Columbia University, 2006-2012
  • Summer Research Fellowships, Columbia University, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011
  • Thomas S. Barclay Graduate Fellowship in Government and Public Law, 2007-2008
  • Outstanding Presentation Award, Undergraduate Research Symposium, Northwestern University, 2003

American Political Science Association

2024. Divergent Democracy: How Policy Positions Came to Dominate Party Competition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (forthcoming).

2021. “Substantive Divergence: The Meaning of Public Opinion on Government Spending in Red and Blue” (with Kelly Rader). Perspectives on Politics 19(3): 824-37.

2021. “Racial Unfairness and Fiscal Politics” (with Kelly Rader). American Politics Research 49(2): 143-56.

2019. “Rights by Fortune or Fight? Reexamining the Addition of Sex to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 44(2): 271-306.

2017. “The Efficiencies and Pathologies of Special Interest Partisanship.” Studies in American Political Development 31(2): 149-169.

2017. “Behind the Federal Spending Paradox: Economic Self-Interest and Symbolic Racism in Contemporary Fiscal Politics” (with Kelly Rader). American Politics Research 45(5): 727-54. 2016.

2016. “Gay Rights in Congress: Public Opinion and (Mis)Representation” (with Jeffrey Lax & Justin Phillips). Public Opinion Quarterly 80(4): 888-913.

2015. “Political Parties and Legislators” in Breaking Down the State, Ed. Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.