University Distinguished Teaching Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 7279, seant@mail.utexas.edu

Professor Theriault is currently researching the effect of interpersonal relationships within the U.S. Congress. He has published six books: Disruption: The Senate During the Trump Era (Oxford University Press, 2024), Congress: The First Branch (with Mickey Edwards; Oxford University Press, 2020), The Great Broadening (with Bryan Jones and Michelle Whyman; University of Chicago Press, 2019), The Gingrich Senators (Oxford University Press, 2013), Party Polarization in Congress (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Power of the People (Ohio State University Press, 2005). He has also published numerous articles in a variety of journals on subjects ranging from presidential rhetoric to congressional careers and the Louisiana Purchase to the Pendleton Act of 1883.

Theriault’s expertise includes political party polarization in the United States, the U.S. Congress, congressional elections, and the Politics of the Catholic Church. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the Friar Society Teaching Fellowship (the biggest undergraduate teaching award at UT) in 2009, UT Professor the Year in 2011, and the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014. In 2012, he was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712

Associate Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 7276, balberts@austin.utexas.edu

Bethany Albertson is an Associate Professor in the Government Department at UT Austin. She received her PhD in political science and a graduate certificate in social psychology from the University of Chicago. She was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and a Harrington Faculty Fellow at UT Austin. She is a political psychologist and her research interests include American public opinion, emotion, and experimental methods. Her book, Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World, was co-authored with Shana Kushner Gadarian and was published by Cambridge. Anxious Politics was awarded the 2016 Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology and the 2021 Doris Graber Award for the best book in the political communication in the past decade, both through APSA. At University of Texas she has received the Josephina Paredes Endowed Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award. She is currently the faculty director for the Archer Fellowship Program.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712

Professor of Practice , Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
+1 512 471 8324, +1 512 656 6592, srgreenberg@austin.utexas.edu

Sherri Greenberg served for 10 years as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, completing her final term in January 2001. In 1999, she was appointed by the Speaker of the House to chair the House Pensions and Investments Committee, which oversees the Texas State Employee Retirement System, state employee health insurance program, Teacher Retirement System, local public employee retirement systems, and regulation of state investments and public securities. After the 1999 legislative session, the Speaker appointed her as chair of the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance.

Greenberg served two terms on the House Appropriations Committee, which is the House's budget writing committee, and served on the Appropriations Committee's Education and Major Information Systems Subcommittees. Other committee assignments included the House Economic Development Committee and the Welfare-to-Work Committee.

Greenberg's professional background is in public finance. She served as the Manager of Capital Finance for the City of Austin from 1985 to 1989, overseeing the City's debt management, capital budgeting, and capital improvement programs. Prior to that she worked as a Public Finance Officer for Standard & Poor's Corporation in New York, where she analyzed and assigned bond ratings to public projects across the country.

Greenberg has a B.A. in Government from UT Austin and an M.S. in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics. At the LBJ School she teaches courses in public financial management, policy development, and public administration and management. Her teaching and research interests include public finance and budgeting, Texas state government, local government, health care, education, utilities, transportation, and campaigns and elections.

Media Contact: Paul Corliss, paul.corliss@austin.utexas.edu,

Director, Organized Research Unit , Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life , Moody College of Communication
, strama@austin.utexas.edu

Mark Strama is Director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, and a Professor of Practice in the Department of Communication and Media Studies in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas. He also co-teaches Pathways to Civic Engagement in UT’s Plan II Honors program, alongside Professor Lee Walker.

Previously, Mark spent ten years at Google Fiber working to upgrade the speed and quality of internet service in the United States. Prior to that he served five terms in the Texas House of Representatives, where he focused on renewable energy, public education, and electoral reform. Mark received Honorable Mentions on Texas Monthly's Ten Best Legislators list in three of his five sessions in the House; Texas Monthly said "Strama cares as much about others' success as his own."

Prior to running for public office, Mark founded the first company to enable Americans to fill out a voter registration form on the Internet - 700,000 people used this technology to register to vote in the 2000 election cycle. During the 1996 election cycle, Mark was Director of Programs at Rock the Vote, a non-partisan organization that works with MTV and the music industry to engage young people in the political process. He previously worked for former Texas Governor Ann Richards and Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis.

Mark graduated from Brown University with degrees in philosophy and political science. He is married to Crystal Cotti, a former Austin City Hall reporter and a graduate of the Moody College of Communication. They have three industrious daughters and one very lazy dog.

Media Contact: Kathleen Mabley, kmabley@austin.utexas.edu, 512-232-1417

Director of Research for the Texas Politics Project , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 471 0371, joshmblank@austin.utexas.edu

Joshua Blank is the Research Director of the Texas Politics Project, where he has conducted public opinion polling of Texans for over a decade. Blank has extensive experience polling Texas voters about their attitudes towards abortion, gun control/gun violence, voting/elections, and many other areas of public interest. He regularly writes, presents, and gives interviews about contemporary Texas politics, including elections, public opinion, and governance. Born in New York, NY, he has a bachelor's degree in political science from Boston University and a doctoral degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712

Executive Director of Texas Politics Project , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 471 0090, j.henson@austin.utexas.edu

James Henson teaches in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the founder and executive director of the Texas Politics Project and the director of the political internship program. The Texas Politics Project is a hub of research and public affairs work focused on providing non-partisan resources for understanding Texas government and politics. As part of that work, he co-founded the longest running academic survey of public opinion in Texas with Daron Shaw in 2008. Results from more than a decade of statewide polling for that project are available to the public on the Texas Politics Project website. His writing about Texas politics has appeared in every major Texas media outlet, as well as a variety of publications including The Washington Post, The Hill, Texas Monthly, The Texas Tribune, and others. He is the principal author of the Texas Politics textbook published by Soomo Learning and used in introductory Texas government courses across the state, which is now in its 11th edition.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712

Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 7268, emcdaniel@austin.utexas.edu

Prof. Eric L. McDaniel is a professor in the Department of Government and the co-director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a graduate of Wilberforce University, the oldest private historically Black college or university, and took his PhD. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research examines how the intersection of race and religion influence the American political landscape. His first book, Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches, provides an explanation for why some Black churches choose to engage the political world while others do not. His most recent book, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics, co-authored with Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, explores the ramifications of Americans believing that their nation is God’s chosen nation. Focusing specifically on how this belief influences how Americans come to understand themselves and the nation’s place in the world, they demonstrate the pervasive power of American religious nationalism. He has published articles in the Political Research Quarterly, Political Psychology, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Journal of Racial and Ethnic Politics. Prof. McDaniel has also written several book chapters and opinion pieces related race, religion and American politics. Prof. McDaniel has been awarded two grants from the National Science Foundation and from 2008-2010 served as Health Policy Scholar for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at the University of California, Berkely.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712

Associate Professor of Instruction , Department of Communication Studies , Moody College of Communication
, jcutbirth@utexas.edu

Joe Cutbirth is a lecturer in the Communication and Leadership major with appointments in the Communication Studies andJournalism departments. He also teaches in the UT-NYC program. His courses examine how leadership narratives are formed and used, the ethical implications of truth and deception, and the increasingly complex relationship between satire, propaganda and journalism in American politics. His research has been published in Ethnography Matters, Media Ethics, and The Handbook of Intellectual Freedom.

He has taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, New York University, University of Virginia, University of British Columbia, and University of Houston. Cutbirth is former statehouse reporter for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, editor of the Texas Observer, and politics blogger for Huffington Post. He was Texas Democratic Party communication director for Gov. Ann Richards and the Clinton-Gore re-election campaigns. He holds a Ph.D. in communication from Columbia University, an M.A. in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University, and a B.J. in public relations from the University of Texas at Austin.

Media Contact: Kathleen Mabley, kmabley@austin.utexas.edu, 512-232-1417

Professor , Department of Government , College of Liberal Arts
+1 512 232 7275, dshaw@austin.utexas.edu

Daron R. Shaw is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Shaw specializes in American Government, Campaigns and Elections, Political Parties, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior, and Applied Survey Research. He is author of The Race to 270: The Electoral College and Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004 (Chicago), co-author of Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters (Oxford), co-author of The Turnout Myth (Oxford), co-author of The Appearance of Corruption (Oxford) and co-author of Battleground: Electoral College Strategies, Execution, and Impact in the Modern Era (Oxford). His research has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Communication, PS: Political Science, Party Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and several other professional journals. In addition to his academic career, Professor Shaw served as a strategist in the 1992, 2000 and 2004 presidential election campaigns. He is currently co-director of the Fox News Poll, co-director of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, director of the Texas Lyceum Poll, and associate Principle Investigator for the 2024 American National Election Study. He is also a member of the decision team for Fox News, the advisory board for the MIT Election Data & Science Lab, and the advisory board for the Annette Strauss Institute. Formerly, he served as President George W. Bush’s representative on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and as one of the academic directors for President Barack Obama’s Commission for Election Administration.

Media Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, oppenheimer@utexas.edu, 512-475-9712