Sarah Anderson

Education

PhD, Political Science, Stanford University
MS, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BS, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Bio

Sarah E. Anderson is a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at University of California Santa Barbara. Professor Anderson studies how politics shapes the policies that we do (or don’t) get from the political system, with work published in such journals as Nature Climate Change, Legislative Studies Quarterly and the American Journal of Political Science. She’s a particular expert on congressional politics, having worked for a member of Congress before going to graduate school. She recently published a book on Rejecting Compromise: Legislators’ Fear of Primary Voters and has a large interdisciplinary project on how salient wildfires affect distribution of government resources. She finds creative ways to use data to quantify these political phenomena – such as using the federal budget to quantify policy priorities or attending legislator summits to do interviews. Professor Anderson also serves as the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Bren School, where she works to ensure that research, teaching, and service at the Bren School involves and empowers all communities. In all of her professional capacity, she works with students and faculty to overcome social and political barriers to solving environmental problems. In addition to a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, she holds an M.S. in Economics from Stanford University and a B.S. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.