Welcome!

I am a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the Department of Government and am currently a Fellow with the Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University. I am a member of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Program on Inequality and Social Policy.

My research fields include social policy, inequality, international political economy, and comparative and American politics.

Specific research interests include network analysis, the media, Congress, political behavior, urban studies and cities, public opinion and survey research, political communication and elections, and the social nature of political behavior.

My dissertation project – Where Everyone Knows Your Name – asks a simple question: Why do some people vote, while others do not? I explore this issue of political participation in comparative perspective. The dissertation offers a rational choice inspired theory of political participation and links political activities (i.e. voting, protest, discussion, etc) to one’s immediate socio-political environment by looking at one’s community and embedded reputation in that space.

I have been working on a variety of ongoing projects with a number of collaborators that I hope to further develop this year and into next. The topics are broad – from work on the soft media and the impact of comedy news on political discourse among American youth to understanding Canadian civic participation to further arguing that the so-called “culture war” in the United States is largely a myth in which American attitudes, opinions, and positions are not polarized, although their choices continue to widen between two competing extremes.

Please feel free to email me any time at: sabrams@fas.harvard.edu