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Tabitha Bonilla

Associate Professor, Institute for Policy Research

Interests

Program Area(s): American Politics

Subfield Specialties: Methods

Biography

Tabitha Bonilla studies political behavior and communication and broadly examines how elite communication influences voter opinions of candidates and political policies. In particular, her work focuses on how messaging polarizes attitudes or can bridge attitudinal divides with substantive focuses on important topics in American politics ranging from gun control to human trafficking and immigration. Her work incorporates a range of quantitative methods including experiments and text analysis.  

Bonilla earned her PhD in political science in 2015 from Stanford University. She then worked as a postdoctoral scholar and teaching fellow in the political science department at the University of Southern California through 2016.