Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Connor Halloran Phillips

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce the promotion of Connor Halloran Phillips from CEL Research Affiliate to Faculty Affiliate.

Dr. Phillips is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST). His research examines interest groups, parties, legislatures, and elections in the US with a focus on how federalism shapes phenomena such as partisan polarization and voter participation. In his current work, Dr. Phillips analyzes interest groups’ campaign contributions and ratings of state legislators to understand the strategies groups adopt in engaging with politics and to assess their role in promoting polarization at the state level. Beyond this project, some of his other research explores the impact of state and local electoral rules on party registration and turnout as well as how growing extremism in state legislatures influences the ideological positions of candidates for Congress. Dr. Phillips was born in Pittsburgh, PA and attended Duke University, graduating in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Science. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, he received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University in 2023 and served as a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University and Vanderbilt University.

We are excited to continue working with Dr. Phillips in his new role and look forward to his assistance in advancing our understanding of legislative effectiveness.