Hi, I'm Shawn. I’m a Research Analyst with the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously I was an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Southern Oregon University, where I taught courses in American politics and research methods, including Congress, Political Parties, Campaigns & Elections, and the Presidency. Until Fall 2020, I was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. I earned my Ph.D. in June of 2018 from UCLA and received my B.A. in Political Science from Brown University in 2012. I was born and raised in the first/ best state of Delaware.

My research focuses on political parties in Congress and the organized interests that they represent. My current project studies the role of organized interests in Congressional primaries, where my dissertation focused on the financial influence of these groups have on the electoral prospects of primary candidates. This work stems from a larger collaborative effort at UCLA, Parties on the Ground -- a multi-method approach to understanding nominations and the composition of political parties in the United States. I have conducted elite interviews, exit surveys, and network analysis of campaign contributions to help shed light on how political parties shape our democracy.

My published research can be found in Science Advances, The American Political Science Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, Electoral Studies and other publications. For more information about me and my on-going research, check out my research page above or my C.V. 

You can reach me at shawn.patterson@appc.upenn.edu.