Faculty

Dr. Burton Atkins is an instructor for Penn State World Campus and Professor Emeritus (political science) at Florida State University. His research interests and publications have focused on American constitutional law and judicial behavior, as well as on comparative judicial studies with an emphasis on the British appellate courts.

Dr. James W. Binney is an instructor for Penn State World Campus. He has a wide range of teaching interests that include American politics, international relations theory, racial politics and ethnic conflict, comparative politics (regional specialties in Post-Soviet politics and Central Asia), political and economic development, developing nations, and political theory and ideologies. Dr. Binney is interested in research in foreign aid.

Dr. Christopher Cook’s research and teaching interests include foreign policy with an emphasis on intervention, terrorism, and political communication. He has published articles examining American foreign policy in the Congo and Sierra Leone as well as examining U.S. media coverage of African conflicts.

Dr. Lee Hannah's research and teaching interests primarily focus on public policy and political behavior. He is currently working on a book titled "Green Rush: The Rise of Legal Marijuana in the American States" with Daniel Mallinson (Penn State Harrisburg). The book is under contract with New York University Press. He has published articles in Science, Policy Studies Journal, Climatic Change, Publius, State and Local Government Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, and others. He is currently an associate professor of political science at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

Dr. Marie Hojnacki is an associate professor of political science at Penn State University Park. Her research examines how organized interests act to shape public policy, and why some types of interests have advantages over others in terms of policy success and agenda setting. A current project investigates how organizations communicate their issue priorities, and how and why communication strategies may differ for different types of groups. Dr. Hojnacki teaches about political parties, interest groups, representation, and research design.

Dr. Amy Linch is an assistant professor of teaching and co-director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Political Science at Penn State University Park. She has authored and edited several works on democratization in post-communist societies and social and political transformation in early modern England. Her recent work focuses on the intersection between human capabilities and the capabilities of other species.

Dr. Jeremy Ladd is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University, where he teaches courses on comparative politics, political methodology, and data science. His research focuses on opposition political parties in electoral authoritarian regimes and emerging democracies, with particular attention to what makes some parties in these contexts successful and others not. He is also interested in how both authoritarians and their opponents are adapting to the digital world.

Dr. Tamar London is an instructor for Penn State World Campus. Her past research has focused on mathematical models of international negotiation. She teaches courses on international relations, international political economy, and game theory and statistics.

Dr. Nicole Morford is an instructor for Penn State World Campus. Her research focused on social movements and civil society development in post-Soviet states, particularly the women's movement in Ukraine. She teaches courses about American and comparative politics.

Dr. Adam Nye is an associate teaching professor in the Department of Political Science at Penn State’s University Park campus. He primarily teaches courses related to public law and judicial politics. The public law courses focus on landmark Supreme Court cases, while the courses related to judicial politics concentrate on legal procedures and the behavior of judges. In addition, Dr. Nye also teaches about the bureaucracy in America, and the American national government.

Dr. Amanda Parks, an instructor for Penn State World Campus, centers her research and teaching interests around public opinion and political communication, with a particular focus on the institutional reasons for media distortions and its effect on citizens' evaluations of policies and candidates. Other research interests include deliberative citizen engagement and the effects of new media on political communication.

Dr. Daniel Ponder is a Professor of Political Science at Drury University in his hometown of Springfield, MO. For 13 years before that he was a professor at the University of Colorado. His research and writing focus on the American presidency, but he teaches on the Supreme Court, Constitutional Law,  quantitative methods, Congress and the Presidency, Public Policy, and the interplay of film, music, and politics. He wrote 2 books on the presidency and his research appears in numerous scholarly journals. In 2019-20, he was President of a section of the American Political Science Association.

Dr. Amy Sentementes is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, where she teaches courses on public opinion, political psychology, and gender and politics. Recently, she began teaching a food politics course, combining her passion for food writing with her professional training in political science. The course explores the political institutions involved in food production and consumption patterns, as well as the psychological contributions food provides in American society.