Traci Burch
Traci Burch holds appointments as an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Northwestern University and a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Her dissertation, Punishment and Participation: How Criminal Convictions Threaten American Democracy won the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize “for the best dissertation presented on a subject in political science” at Harvard University. Her research interests include criminal justice policy, race and ethnic politics, and political behavior. Recent publications include “Contingent Public Policies and the Stability of Racial Hierarchy: Lessons from Immigration and Census Policy,” (with Jennifer Hochschild, Harvard University) in Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforseen, edited by Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi and “Political Voice in an Age of Inequality,” (with Kay Lehman Schlozman, Boston College) in America at Risk: Dangers on the Horizon, edited by Robert Faulkner and Susan Shell.
Currently, at the ABF, Traci serves as Associate Editor of Law and Social Inquiry. She is working on a project that explores the impact of criminal conviction rates and crime rates on neighborhood political participation as well as a project that examines networks and among interest groups.