Sona N. Golder is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the Florida State University. She is also a member of the Political Institutions Working Group at FSU. Much of Sona's research focuses on the interaction between political elites and institutional rules. Some of the specific puzzles she has studied are the following: Under what conditions will party leaders form pre-electoral coalitions rather than compete independently in elections? What are the effects of pre-electoral coalitions on government formation and duration? Do electoral rules affect the ability of left- and right-wing governments to implement distinct economic policies? One area of her current research examines the institutional determinants of bargaining delays in the government formation process as the first part of a larger project focusing on the differences in the formation and performance of post-election and inter-election governments. A separate area of research has to do with the institutional determinants of democratization and the link between institutional choices and democratic stability. Her recent publications include The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation (Ohio State University Press, 2006) and articles in the British Journal of Political Science and Electoral Studies. Sona teaches courses on game theory, comparative politics, political institutions, European politics, and institutional approaches to democracies and dictatorships. She is also currently working on a textbook on comparative politics for CQ Press. Sona is looking forward to spending the month at UCLA with her husband and two-year old son, although she is very sad to miss out on the heat and humidity of the Tallahassee summer.

Email: sgolder@fsu.edu
Webpage: http://www.fsu.edu/~polisci/people/faculty/sgolder.htm

Kristin Kanthak is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa (where Chuck Shipan and fellow MFR Becky Morton were her dissertation co-chairs) and previously taught at the University of Arizona. Her work focuses on representation, legislative behavior, and elections, particularly in the U.S. Congress. More specifically, her work has looked at effects of committee assignment rules, campaign finance, and gender. Her work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Public Choice, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.

Rebecca Morton is a Professor in the Wilf Family Department of Politics at New York University. Her substantive research has focused on the electoral process, with a particular emphasis on the effects of different electoral institutions on the choices of candidates and voters. Her book (coauthored with Kenneth Williams) Learning by Voting: Sequential Choices in Presidential Primaries and Other Elections (2001), addresses the effects of voting sequentially (as in presidential primaries in the United States or in elections with substantial mail-in and absentee voting) on the choices voters make and the candidates who win.  Her new book, Analyzing Elections (2006), is a comprehensive study of the American electoral process. Methodologically, Morton has considered the complexity of empirical evaluation of formal models in the discipline of political science in her book, Methods and Models: A Guide to the Empirical Analysis of Formal Models in Political Science (1999).  More recently, she has focused on the role played by experimental research in addressing causal questions in political science in a manuscript coauthored with Kenneth Williams, From Nature to the Lab:  Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality.  Both her methodological and substantive research have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Law and Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economics and Politics, and Social Choice and Welfare.

Email: rebecca.morton@nyu.edu
Web page: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/morton/morton_home.html

Kristopher Ramsay: I am an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the Princeton University. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 2005. Much of my research focuses on causes of conflict and war, but I also work on projects related to political methodology, political economy, and resource politics. I participated in the first EITM as a student and was a guest lecturer for EITMs Michigan and Duke. I grew up "on Golden Pond" in Holderness NH and graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1998. I am married with two boys and since 1998 I have lived in every "new" state, except New Mexico.

Sebastian M. Saiegh: I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. I earned my Ph.D. from New York University in January 2004, and have previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh. My research interests cut across the fields of comparative politics, positive political theory and political economy. They include the study of institutional design/change and of the effects of political institutions on policy outcomes. My primary focus is on Latin American countries. My work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Comparative Politics.

Michael F. Thies (Associate Professor of Political Science, UCLA) studies parties, elections, and legislatures in Japan and Western Europe. His recent work has appeared in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of Theoretical Politics, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and Politics & Gender. He is currently engaged in research on the legislative consequences of electoral systems.

Email: thies@polisci.ucla.edu
Webpage: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~thies