Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Mackenzie Dobson

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is pleased to announce Mackenzie Dobson as one of our newest faculty affiliates, having recently been one of our graduate research affiliates.

 

Mackenzie R. Dobson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research centers on bipartisan collaboration, effective lawmaking, and political representation in American legislatures. She studies how legislators build relationships across party lines, how those relationships shape policymaking and legislative success across policy areas, and how reform efforts, including those aimed at increasing effective lawmaking, policy responsiveness, and representation, can make lawmakers more effective at their jobs.

 

Dr. Dobson also works on open data initiatives, including her forthcoming R package biparty, which provides researchers, journalists, legislators, and the public with tools to explore bipartisanship in Congress — tracking trends over time, comparing members to one another, and examining patterns by issue area and chamber.

 

Dr. Dobson published work appears in outlets such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and PS: Political Science and Politics. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

 

The CEL is excited to support Dr. Dobson’s continuing research in the field of effective lawmaking, and we are grateful to have her on our team.