DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Interests

Research Interest(s): American Political Development; Social Policy; Historical Analysis

Program Area(s): American Politics

Regional Specialization(s): United States

Subfield Specialties: American Political Development; American Political Economy; Comparative Historical Analysis; Feminist and Gender Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Biography

Professor Thurston's research is on American political development, political economy, and public policy, with a particular interest in how politics and public policy shape market inequalities along the lines of race and gender. She is the author of At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and co-author (with Emily Zackin) of The Political Development of American Debt Relief (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Her research has been published in Perspectives in Politics, Studies in American Political Development, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the Journal of Public Policy, and commentaries have appeared in The Daily Beast, Ms., and The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), among others.

Thurston received her B.A. in economics and political science from Johns Hopkins University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019-2020, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Select Publications

Book

• The Political Development of American Debt Relief. University of Chicago Press. 2024. Joint with Emily Zackin.
• At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2018. 

Articles and Chapters

• "How should we govern housing markets in a moral political economy?" Daedalus, Vol. 152, No. 1: 194-197, 2023.
• "Race and Historical Political Economy." In Oxford Handbook in Historical Political Economy, edited by Jeffrey Jenkins and Jared Rubin. Joint with David Bateman and Jacob Grumbach, 2023.
• "From the Margins to the Center: A Bottom-Up Approach to Welfare State Scholarship." Joint with Jamila Michener and Mallory SoRelle. Perspectives on Politics. Vol. 20, No. 1: 154-169, 2022.
• "Racial Inequality, Market Inequality, and the American Political Economy." Chapter 4 in Jacob Hacker, Alex Hertel-Fernandez, Paul Pierson, and Kathleen Thelen, eds., American Political Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2021.
• "Hidden Fees?" UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review, Vol. 4, No. 1. 2020.
• "The Limited Party-Building Effects of Policy Feedback," chapter 2, in Phil Rocco and Zac Callen, eds. An Unsettled Time: American Political Development and the Trump Presidency, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Joint with Daniel Galvin. 2020.
• "From Personal to Partisan: Abortion, Party, and Religion Among California State Legislators." Joint with David Karol. Studies in American Political Development. Vol. 34. No. 1. 2020.
• "Black Lives Matter, American Political Development, and the Politics of Visibility." Politics, Groups, and Identities 6(1): 162-70. 2018.
• "Policy Feedback in the Public-Private Welfare State: Citizens Advocacy Groups and the Expansion of Access to Government Homeownership Programs." Studies in American Political Development 29(2):250-67. 2015.
• "From Metaphors to Measures: Observable Indicators of Gradual Institutional Change." Journal of Public Policy 34(1): 35-62. Joint with Phil Rocco. 2014.

Honors and Awards

• APSA Heinz Eulau Award for best article published in Perspectives on Politics, 2023
• Distinguished Teaching Award, Northwestern Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, 2022
• J. David Greenstone Book Award, American Political Science Association Politics and History section, 2020