Past Fellows

DANIELLE CHARETTE (PhD, University of Chicago) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She served as the associate director of PCD from 2023-4 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Politics Department from 2021-23. Her research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Studies, the History of European Ideas, The History of Political Thought, History, and several edited volumes. She is also the book review editor for American Political Thought. Her current book project explores Hume’s understanding of the modern commercial state. 

RITA KOGANZON (PhD, Harvard University) is an assistant professor in the department of politics at the University of Houston. She served as the associate director of PCD from 2016-22 and was an assistant professor in UVA's General Faculty. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families (Oxford, 2021), examined the way early liberal thinkers conceived the role of authority in education. Her research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Review of Politics, and the History of Education Quarterly. She has worked as an editorial assistant at the New York Times and occasionally contributes to popular publications, including The Hedgehog Review, The Point, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and National Affairs.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

2022-24

MAXWELL LYKINS (PhD, University of Michigan) is a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin College. He specializes in Roman political thought and has published in Political Research Quarterly, Polis: The Journal for Greek and Roman Political Thought, and the Michigan Journal of Law and Society. He is currently working on a book project on Tacitus and republican political philosophy.

2020-2022

RACHEL ALEXANDER (PhD, Baylor University) has published in Perspectives on Political Science, Interpretation, and Law and Justice and received Baylor’s 2019-2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award. In 2019-2020 she was a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the James Madison Program and Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

2018-2020

TIMOTHY BRENNAN (PhD, Boston College) is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, European Legacy, History of European Ideas, and the History of Political Thought.

JORDAN CASH (PhD, Baylor University) is an assistant professor in James Madison College at Michigan State. Previously he was a lecturer at Baylor University and served as the founder and director of the Zavala Program for Constitutional Studies. His work has appeared in journals such as American Political Thought, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Law and History Review, and Congress & the Presidency.

2016-2018

CONNOR EWING (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. His research spans the fields of public law and American constitutional development. His work has appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Presidential Studies Quarterly, the Tulsa Law Review, and various edited volumes. Previously he was an assistant professor at the University of Missouri. 

2014-2016

ETHAN ALEXANDER-DAVEY (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison; M.Phil., University of Cambridge) is assistant professor of political science at Campbell University. His work has appeared in The History of Political Thought and Constitutional Studies. He is a co-editor with Richard Avramenko of Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times (Lexington Books, 2018).

SHILO BROOKS (Ph.D., Boston College) is a teaching associate professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He conducts research in the history of political thought, focusing on the theoretical foundations of liberalism in thinkers from Rousseau to Nietzsche. His current projects include a book manuscript entitled Nietzsche’s Beginning: A Study of the Early Period. Before coming to UVA he was a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin College.

EVAN PIVONKA, (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Special Assistant to the Honor Committee at the University of Virginia and an instructor in the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy.

2012-2014

SARA HENARY (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is associate professor of political science at Missouri State University.

EVAN PIVONKA, (Ph.D., University of Virginia)

NICHOLAS STARR, (Ph.D., Boston College) is a tutor at St. John’s College – Santa Fe.

2010-2012

KEEGAN CALLANAN (Ph.D., Duke University) is associate professor of political science at Middlebury College. He is author of Montesquieu's Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics (Cambridge, 2018) and co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu (Cambridge, 2022). 

JEREMIAH H. RUSSELL (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) was an assistant professor of political science at Jacksonville State University and now serves as headmaster of St. John Paul II Catholic High School in Huntsville, Alabama.

MATTHEW SITMAN (Ph.D. Candidate, Georgetown University) is associate editor of Commonweal.

2008-2010

DANIEL DONESON (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a Lecturer and Senior Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

LYNN UZZELL (Ph.D., University of Dallas) is an associate professor of political science at Bethel University. She specializes in the Constitutional Convention and led numerous PCD summer institutes for secondary school teachers. She has also taught at Washington and Lee University and Baylor University and served for four years as scholar in residence at the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier

2006-2008

JEREMY J. MHIRE (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is associate professor of political science at Louisiana Tech University, where he directs the Waggonner Center for Civic Engagement and Public Policy.

CARL ERIC SCOTT (Ph.D., Fordham University) has taught at Hampden-Sydney College, Skidmore College, Washington and Lee University, and Christopher Newport University. He writes on politics, philosophy, film, and music for the blog Postmodern Conservative and leads the Provo Great Books Club.

DEREK A. WEBB (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame; J.D., Georgetown University) was a fellow in Stanford's Constitutional Law Center. He clerked for Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was a a Supreme Court Fellow in the Office of the Counselor to the Chief Justice. He is currently an associate at Sidley Austin LLP.

BENJAMIN MITCHELL (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is assistant professor of American Politics at the United States Military Academy, West Point.

VISITING SENIOR FELLOWS

2023-24 

JAMES PONTUSO was Patterson Professor in the Government Department at Hampden-Sydney College until his retirement in 2022. He has taught or lectured in a dozen countries, including as a John Adams Fellow at the University of London, a Fulbright scholar the Czech Republic, and a visiting Professor at the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani. His latest book, Nature's Virtue, was published by St. Augustine's Press in 2019. 

2007-8

JEFFREY SIKKENGA (PhD, University of Toronto) is a professor of political science at Ashland University and serves as executive director of the Ashland Center.