Welcome! I’m Dr. Eric R. Schmidt. In July 2021, I received my Ph.D from Indiana University; at present, I’m a Political Science Teaching Fellow at Concordia College. As a scholar of long-term partisan change in the United States, my work explores the (complex and interconnected) dynamics of partisanship, ideology, and group attachments. As a teacher, I seek not just to teach American politics — but also to train students to constructively assess their responsibilities as democratic citizens. And as a participant in the (unwieldy and, often, maddeningly contradictory) project of higher education, I strive to recognize – and celebrate – students’ unique contributions to campus life.
My research has been supported by an IU College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship (2019-2020), and multiple competitive grants from IU’s Center on American Politics; and my work has been published in Political Behavior, P.S.: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, and (forthcoming) The Palgrave Handbook of Populism. At IU, I trained undergraduates in high-impact research design through the Indiana Political Analysis Workshop; served as Research Assistant to the Center on American Politics; and served as Project Manager (from 2017-2021) for the Center’s annual participation in the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES). Here’s a copy of my curriculum vitae.
Eric R. Schmidt, PhD 