Kristin N. Wylie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at James Madison University, and received her Ph.D. from the Department of Government at the University of Texas (2012). Her research examines how electoral rules, political parties, and constituencies interact to affect the representativeness and accountability of democracy.
Her first book, Party Institutionalization and Women’s Representation in Democratic Brazil (Cambridge University Press 2018), was awarded the 2019 Alan Rosenthal Prize. The book explains how weakly institutionalized and male-dominant parties interact to undermine descriptive representation in Brazil. Wylie is currently developing a research agenda exploring women’s political empowerment beyond the legislature, with an emphasis on popular movements for political reform, and connections between women’s participation in social movements, electoral politics, and gender equity policy initiatives. Her research has been published in Politics & Gender, Politics, Groups, & Identities, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Journal of Black Studies, and European Journal of Politics & Gender.