Jennifer Lawless

Jennifer L. Lawless is the Lenore Reeves and George Spicer Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and chair of the Department of Politics. Prior to joining the UVA faculty, she was a professor of government at American University and the director of the Women & Politics Institute. Before that, she was an assistant and then associate professor at Brown University.

Lawless's research focuses on political ambition, campaigns and elections, and media and politics. She is the author or co-author of six books, including Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era (with Danny Hayes) and It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (with Richard L. Fox). Her research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, has appeared in numerous academic journals and is regularly cited in the popular press.

She is an editor of the American Journal of Political Science and holds an appointment as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Lawless graduated from Union College with a BA in political science, and Stanford University with an MA and PhD in political science. In 2006, she sought the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Rhode Island’s second congressional district. Although she lost the race, she remains an obsessive political junkie.