Nancy Burns

Nancy is the Warren E. Miller Collegiate Professor of Political Science. She served as Chair of the Department from 2014 to 2024. She directed the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research from 2005 through 2014.   She served as the co-Principal Investigator (jointly with Don Kinder) of the American National Election Studies (ANES) from 1999 through 2006.  The ANES is the longest-running survey in the social sciences and is a public good used by thousands of scholars worldwide every year, and is the model for election studies worldwide.   She received APSA’s Derthick Award for the most enduring book on federalism and intergovernmental relations,  APSA’s Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on gender and politics, MPSA’s Sophonisba Breckinridge Prize for the best paper in gender and politics (twice), SPSA’s Marion Irish Prize for the best paper on gender and politics, and WPSA’s Betty Nesvold Prize for the best paper on gender and politics. She has served as a Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  Nancy is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   She has served on 62 dissertation committees, chairing 12 of these.   She typically supervises two senior theses a year.  She is currently working with graduate student Sara Morell, UM PhD Ashley Jardina, Shauna Shames, and Kay Lehman Schlozman on a book on gender and political participation.   She is also in the midst of a many-year project with Professor Don Kinder, studying gender, race, and public opinion in the US.  She is fortunate to have arrived at Michigan in 1990 as a pre-doctoral fellow.  Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Kansas.  Her PhD is from Harvard.

Affiliation(s)

• Center for Political Studies