Dr. Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod, P.I.
Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod is a member of the teaching faculty at the University of South Carolina, Department of Political Science and founder of the Digital Campaigns Project (DCP). Previously he was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He received his PhD from Cornell University.
Dr. Meyer-Gutbrod’s research explores the limits of the growing animosity between Democratic and Republican politicians associated with partisan polarization by examining bipartisan cooperation between federal and state agents. Specifically, his work explores partisan rhetoric at different levels of government, with a focus on the President, members of Congress, and state legislators. Conventional wisdom suggests that national partisan division and the nationalization of politics will produce consistent polarization across institutions. His research explores inconsistencies, with the goal of identifying mechanisms for undermining polarization. He argues that the mechanisms inherent in America’s federated institutions can challenge national partisan polarization by creating avenues for effective bipartisan governance and enduring policy.
Current Graduate Students
Ryan Dennehy
Ryan Dennehy is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of South Carolina. He studies varied topics in American Politics and Public Administration/Public Policy. His primary interests lie in class-based rhetoric and political motivations behind state-driven poverty alleviation measures. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and History from Lebanon Valley College. His work principally examines political communication and rhetorical frames. He argues that the ways in which we talk about politics are not abstractions of institutions, policymaking, or other underlying processes. Rather, rhetoric itself makes political reality. Additionally, he examines policy and rhetorical diffusion among American states.
Current Undergraduate Students
Hagan Hiott
Hagan Hiott is a junior studying political science and history at the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on political campaign images and how they reveal shared identities such as race, gender, religion, and the urban-rural divide with voters. She is from Charleston, South Carolina, and after graduation, plans to attend law school or work in government.
Former Undergraduate Students
Viginia Eberlin
Virginia graduated from the University of South in Carolina in 2023 with her BA in Psychology. Her research focuses on the connections between major media outlets, state-level campaigns, and public perception of political cues with an emphasis on familiarity and credibility. In 2023, Virginia was awarded the Magellan Scholar Award in connection to the national, public opinion survey that she drafted and launched for her research. In 2024, she began pursuing her JD at Georgetown University.
Rachael Erickson
Rachael is a two-time alumna of USC originally from Columbia, MO (Political Science and History ’23; MPA ’24). Her research centers on political and public reactions to opioid use, race in political media, and welfare policy implementation.
Rachael won the 2022-2023 University Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards for her work on rhetoric on opioids in state legislative campaigns.
Emma O’Keeffe
Emma O’Keeffe is a 2023 graduate of the University of South Carolina and is originally from Toms River, New Jersey. After graduation, Emma plans to pursue a master’s degree in political science and/or attend law school. Her research examines political rhetoric in White House press briefings, particularly interruptions on the basis of gender.
Felicity Ropp
Felicity graduated from the University of South Carolina Honors college with a bachelors degree in political science and history. She originally hails from upstate SC. Her research looks at how state political parties and campaigns frame poverty and welfare, particularly comparing urban/rural variables and concentrating on the American South. After graduation, she plans to work a few years in state government before pursuing a master’s in public policy focused on social policy and poverty alleviation. In her spare time, Felicity can be found browsing an antique store, working on a crossword puzzle, or making a mess in the kitchen.
Kiley Cosby
Kiley Cosby is a 2023 graduate of the University of South Carolina Honors College. She is originally from Chapin, South Carolina and plans to attend Law School after graduation. Her project is focused on gender discrepancies in state campaigns. She is researching how campaign rhetoric differs between men and women, and what issues each group tends to focus on more, with a special focus on abortion issues during the 2022 campaign.
Max J. Heckman
Max is a 2024 graduate of the University of South Carolina. For his Honors thesis titled “How State Legislative Candidates Talked About the Black Lives Matter Protests of 2020,” he completed an analysis of rhetoric employed by state level candidates on racial issues with the goal of understanding the relationship between national narratives and local contexts, the partisan dynamics of racial rhetoric, and state level campaigning. He is currently pursuing his JD at Georgetown University.
Ewan Thompson
Ewan is a December 2023 graduate of the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on the relationship between legislative chamber control and negative campaign speech. Following graduation, he returned to his native Alexandria, Virginia and currently works as a legislative assistant for a member of the Senate of Virginia. He plans on attending graduate school at some point in the future.
Web Design Team
Sophia Riley
Sophia Riley is a recent alumnus of the University of South Carolina, hailing from Pinopolis, South Carolina. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Computer Science at the Technological University of Munich. While at the University of South Carolina, she worked as a web developer for the Digital Research Services and Collections department at Thomas Cooper Library. After earning her master’s degree, she aspires to pursue a career in academia as a professor.
