Hayley M. Cohen

PhD, Political Science

I am an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. I previously held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy within the Watson Institute at Brown University. I received my PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in May 2025. I study American politics and political behavior, with a focus on experimental methodology. 

My research focuses on elite and voter behavior in U.S. elections, specializing in primary elections. Specifically, I build and test theories of vote choice, turnout, campaign strategy and candidate entry in the underexplored, but increasingly important, context of partisan primary elections. I specialize in survey and field experiments, but also employ qualitative interviews, descriptive data, and causal inference methods in my work. I also study voter behavior writ large, and local politics with an emphasis on zoning policy.

My CV is available here. My research is supported by the Rapoport Family Foundation, the Columbia Experimental Lab for Social Sciences, and the Institute for Humane Studies, is published in American Politics Research, and was awarded Best Graduate Student Poster at the 2024 State Politics and Policy Conference

Before graduate school, I received a BA in Political Science at Tufts University and worked in political polling.