Zeynep Somer-Topcu
Professor, Department of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Welcome!
I am a political science professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. I am also one of the chief editors at the British Journal of Political Science, Vice-President of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), and the Chair of the Diversity Committee of the European Political Science Society (EPSS) among my other services.
My research interests are at the intersection of political parties and voter behavior in advanced democracies. My work so far has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and other journals. I recently published Glass Ceilings, Glass Cliffs, and Quicksands: Gendered Party Leadership in Parliamentary Systems (coauthored with Andrea Aldrich) with Cambridge University Press, in which we examine the life-cycle of women party leaders from candidacy to their election to and termination from party leadership.
I am currently working on a series of projects examining party campaign rhetoric and voter perceptions of party issue positions. My research sheds light on why political parties adopt certain electoral strategies and what the electoral and behavioral consequences of these strategies are.
My undergraduate teaching offerings include Western European Politics and Comparative Political Parties. At the graduate level, I teach Comparative Political Parties and Comparative Representation and Accountability seminars, as well as Scope and Methods and Statistics I courses as part of the methods sequence.