People

Jana Morgan (UNC PhD) is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers. Her research centers around issues of inequality, exclusion, and representation across the Americas. She examines how democracies have frequently failed to confront entrenched hierarchies along the axes of race, class, and gender, emphasizing how weaknesses in the practical functioning of democracy have significant costs for the lived experiences of ordinary citizens and for the stability and survival of democratic regimes. Professor Morgan is author of Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse, which won the Van Cott Award Best Book from the Latin American Studies Association. Drawing on fieldwork in Venezuela, the book demonstrates how representational failures cause party system decay and enable the rise of anti-system outsiders. She is also co-author of Hijacking the Agenda: Economic Power and Political Influence, which details how resource inequalities cause policymakers to prioritize wealthy interests and ignore the concerns of other groups. Hijacking the Agenda won the American Political Science Association’s Gladys Kammerer Award. Her journal articles have been published in various outlets, including the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Latin American Research Review, and Perspectives on Politics. Professor Morgan has received external funding from organizations including the Russell Sage Foundation, the Pew Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays program, and she has held residential fellowships at the Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Wilson Center. She often presents her work at universities, think tanks, and government agencies across the Americas. At Rutgers, Professor Morgan teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on comparative politics, Latin American politics, comparative race and ethnic politics, and qualitative methods.