Selfie in a bathroom mirror wearing black pants with pink and blue flowers, a light blue top, and a black blazer with rhinestones
Cosplaying as a sociologist for a few days at #ESS2026! I’m really enjoying the mini conference on reproduction, and this kicks off the 2026 conference circuit for me! Looking forward to hearing more great presentations and meeting the lovely ESS members here in DC!
I’m beyond grateful to my interviewees and the other people along the way who helped me, especially @paytongannon.bsky.social @cerencevik.bsky.social @keonhison.bsky.social and more! I’d love to hear your thoughts if you read the article! Reprosky gendersky polisky
…to pregnant people or the experts charged with caring for them. I conclude the piece by offering policy recommendations on how the administration of the current policy could be improved without needing to fundamentally change the law governing abortion in Italy.
These doctors are not necessarily against abortion, but they decline to provide abortion care because doing so harms their careers and is met by judgment and ostracism from their peers. Both pro- and anti-abortion doctors agree that the public health system doesn’t provide enough support…
Bringing together the literature on abortion policy, public administration, and religion in politics, I found that it’s hard to access abortion in Italy because of the working conditions facing abortion doctors there.
I’m so glad to see this paper — my first solo-authored one and second from my dissertation — finally published! If you’ve heard me talk about my research in the last couple of years, you know this is the story that started it all for me, and I’m so happy to finally have it out there in the world.
Scary time for academic freedom in the US these days. I have more faith in my students than these university presidents seem to — they are able to understand nuance and form their own opinions, and I’ll keep helping them do so as long as I can.
Calling all comparative legislative scholars! We’ve got a new dataset with committee memberships from 14 countries over 35 years, spanning almost 15,000 MPs in 260 parties! Grateful for my excellent coauthors! #polisky #gendersky
If this topic interests you, check out the rest of the articles in the special issue! siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...
...depending on the region in which they live. You can read the whole article here: siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...
reprosky gendersky polisky 4/
...conscientious objection within one hospital or hospital system, the regions are able to provide different levels of abortion access. In turn, doctors who provide abortions have much more or less positive experiences in their jobs, and patients have an easier or harder time accessing care... 3/
We quickly realized that what was standard procedure in one place was not necessarily the case in another region, and we dug deeper to determine why regions were implementing the same law in different ways. In the end, we see that due to local administrative choices and cultural norms of... 2/
My and @paytongannon.bsky.social 's latest publication on abortion access in Italy came out last week as part of the special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies! This article grew out of our conversations about the interviews we were each conducting in different regions of Italy. 1/
I am especially excited for the publication of @dmpullan.bsky.social's and my article “'In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it.' The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies."
Read it here: tinyurl.com/3fu5khpu
A special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies on reproductive rights in developed democracies has been published. It has been a pleasure to work with all the authors and my co-editors @dmpullan.bsky.social and @gmripamonti.bsky.social
Read it here: siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/idps
Check out the full lineup -- all of these articles are available for free, because IdPS publishes open access through the Università del Salento press!
siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...
We have had the pleasure of working with sharp scholars & capable editors as we guest edited this issue over the last year. Spanning geographies, levels of analysis, and methods, this issue asks: why are some countries taking steps to liberalize abortion rights, while others are rolling them back?
So happy to see this special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies on Steps Forward and Backward on Abortion Rights in Advanced Democracies published today, coedited with @gmripamonti.bsky.social and @paytongannon.bsky.social! gendersky reprosky polisky
🎉 Congratulations to @paytongannon.bsky.social and @dmpullan.bsky.social who made the Loop Best Blog 2024 shortlist for their article 'Emergency room abortions in the US: doctors’ objections trump patients’ lives'. #RoeVWade
➡️ ow.ly/2k5F50W3jR9
Honored to have been considered for this prize for my work with @paytongannon.bsky.social explaining US court decisions on abortion post-Dobbs! Highly recommend publishing quick, contemporary pieces with @ecprtheloop.bsky.social — always a great experience and great editorial team!
I love when my academic family grows! Attending the very first Politics and Gender Conference at Rutgers University was one of those moments. I met many familiar faces and made new exciting connections.
@politicsgenderj.bsky.social
@ecprgender.bsky.social
@dmpullan.bsky.social
Excited to learn and widen my network at the Politics and Gender conference at Rutgers today and tomorrow! Are my ECPG people here? Please say hi! polisky gendersky
Plot of US job applications by type of job, showing tenure track, temporary faculty, postdoc, non-TT, and administrative jobs applied to from August 2024 - April 2025
Plot of US job applications and rejections from August 2024 - April 2025. The peak number of rejections is about half the number of applications.
Plot of how many days it took for my applications to be rejected, with the max being 225!
Who doesn't love plots!
Finally with all of the t's crossed and i's dotted, I'm delighted to share more about my new job! But I also want to put this success in the context of the overall process that it took to get here. It's hard to get a job these days in many fields, but the field I know best is academia. It was a complicated choice to leave Europe for the next step, but a huge part of that choice was the knowledge that there are just so few long-term jobs available in academia. I made the bet that in the US, I could play the numbers game long enough that eventually, I would find a job that was a good fit. You only need one, after all, but with more application possibilities, I staked my hopes on the US instead of Europe.
In the end, I applied to 177 jobs. Because I am an incurable nerd, I've made plots. Mostly I was aiming for tenure track jobs, because that was my other big hope in the US: to avoid 4, or 6, or 8, or more years of temporary, precarious positions that seem to be inevitable for European postdocs. The market is just really different, and it was a learning curve to remember how to write like an American again, but also to learn the unwritten rules of a system that I haven't been a part of for the last 9 years. A lot of these jobs just never replied. One place that actually interviewed me months ago finally got around to rejecting me literally yesterday. But this also meant that there were days where, on top of submitting more and more applications and doing my current job and flying back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to make life work for my family, I was also getting several rejections a day.
The biggest lesson I've learned about the academic job market is that, while in some ways, every job is extremely specific and hiring for a very narrow set of qualifications, in other ways, it is entirely impersonal. Rejections are not rejections of who you are as a person, and they don't mean that your work is bad or unimportant. The more stable the position, the more time and resources the university is investing in choosing a good long term candidate. It's hard to fire someone from the tenure track, and so they want to make sure they're making a good choice. What constitutes a "good choice" depends on who is on the committee, who has recently retired or left the university, what students are demanding, what the administration is demanding, and where they imagine the discipline / the department going in the future. It was always a matter of time and sheer numbers before my CV would end up in front of the right people in the right place at the right time for us all to fit together.
Starting in August, I will be an assistant professor of political science on the tenure track at Georgia College, a small liberal arts college in the public University System of Georgia south of Atlanta. In the coming weeks, Marco and I are figuring out how to wrap up our life in Germany -- moving out, ending my employment at the University of Cologne, and seeing and celebrating with as many friends as we can. Life in Georgia is going to be really different, but we feel really hopeful about it. I don't know that we'll stay in Georgia forever -- nothing is ever promised -- but it's possible that we could, and that's huge. At the same time, when I say "stay," I don't mean that I won't ever travel -- in fact, I was very clear with my future colleagues that I intend to keep working with my broad international network of colleagues and friends. I will be back. But I will also have a stable home base in a beautiful area that brings so many of the things we're looking to have more of in our lives. This is really exciting, y'all!
I've got a new job! My full thoughts are too long for one post, so see the attached images (with text in the descriptions) for my reflections on the academic job market this year, the choice to jump from Europe to the US, and what's next for me! And of course, there are plots in the reply post ;)
🚨NEW ARTICLE ALERT🚨
"Our findings highlight how court rulings impact opposition strategies and shed more light on the post-reform stage as a crucial phase in determining the fate of liberalizing reforms" 🇺🇸 🇲🇽
@giuliamariani.bsky.social @camreu.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1332/2515...
GenderSky
Finally with a proper citation!
Interested in how women MPs navigate parliamentary careers and adapt their behavior? Stay tuned for our followup project, where we look at how much power and prestige they attain as compared to men! #polisky #gendersky @jwaeckerle.bsky.social @bcastanho.bsky.social
Screenshot from the link included in this post detailing the presentations in this panel
Hey #polisky, who's in Chicago for #MPSA this week? Start off the conference on a high note with our panel "Abortion Policy & Democracy" at 8am Thursday! Looking forward to great conversation w @annacrawford.bsky.social, @klatt.bsky.social, @paytongannon.bsky.social, & others! tinyurl.com/25uz25gw
I don’t address the “harms”’of abortion because the peer reviewed evidence of a years-long study finds that abortion is not harmful. I’ve read the source material and made my own interpretations. You clearly have your own opinion here. Have a nice day!
Thanks for your question. You can read more about the harms of gestational limits at the De Zordo citation you mention, and you can read all about the harms of being denied an abortion in The Turnaway Study — worse health for mothers and children, worse economic status, bad relationships, etc!