Connor Halloran Phillips

Welcome! I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST) at Carnegie Mellon University, offering courses on American politics. In addition, I am an affiliate of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint initiative of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.

My 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 my current work, I leverage 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 my other research explores the impact of state and local electoral rules on voters' choices regarding party registration and turnout as well as how growing extremism in state legislatures influences the ideological positions of candidates for Congress. 

Prior to joining CMIST, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Political Science Department at Vanderbilt University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University in 2023, where I was a Harvard Presidential Scholar, and attended Duke University as an Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholar, graduating in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Science. In my spare time, I am an avid reader, dedicated runner, and long-suffering Pittsburgh Pirates fan.