INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

New IPR Fellows Explore Power and Opportunity in American Life

Scholars bring projects on mass incarceration, political communication, the transition to clean energy, and more

IPR's new fellows (left to right): Chika Okafor, Elizabeth Thom, and Alexander Coppock 

Is it possible to persuade people with opposing political views? Do “colorblind” hiring practices really level the playing field for workers? How can rural communities rebuild political power after industries like coal disappear?

These are just some of the pressing questions now being explored at the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), where three new faculty members arrived as fellows this fall. Political scientists Elizabeth Thom and Alexander Coppock and economist and legal scholar Chika Okafor join IPR’s vibrant interdisciplinary community of more than 170 scholars.

“Welcoming new faculty is one of the best parts of my job,” said IPR Director and sociologist Andrew Papachristos. “Our incoming fellows bring fresh ideas and spark new collaborations across disciplines, reminding us that policy research is dynamic and ever-evolving. As society’s challenges grow and change, our research must do the same.”

Measuring the Influence of Political Messages: Alexander Coppock

Alexander Coppock, associate professor of political science, investigates how information shapes attitudes and behavior. His research explores political persuasion, campaign strategy, misinformation, and research methodology, often relying on large-scale experiments to see how people respond to various messages.

In his award-winning 2022 book, Persuasion in Parallel: How Information Changes Minds About Politics, Coppock reveals that people across political and demographic groups tend to adjust their views in response to new information—usually modestly, but consistently and durably.

“Alex Coppock’s work challenges the conventional wisdom that partisan-motivated reasoning will make people unresponsive to information, or worse, backfire and polarize them into partisan camps,” IPR political scientist and associate director Laurel Harbridge-Yong said. “Alex shows that people do move in the direction of information provided, regardless of their prior belief or partisanship.”

Coppock has also studied the impact of campaign advertising and digital outreach. He observes that ads typically shift opinions by only a few percentage points, but these small changes can matter in close races. He argues that campaigns benefit from experimenting with their ads, giving well-funded campaigns an edge in optimizing messages. His study of digital advertising in the 2020 election similarly shows only modest effects on turnout, underscoring the limits of online persuasion.

Beyond campaigns, Coppock has examined fact-checking and misinformation, police body-camera use, and the lasting influence of newspaper op-eds on public opinion. He also advances research methods in political science, including a “meta-reanalysis” approach that provides a new path to making the kind of generalized empirical claims social scientists often struggle to draw from individual studies.

“Being able to generalize from an entire body of research is hugely important for making good policy decisions, because an intervention might have one effect in a particular study context, but an altogether different effect in the most pressing policy setting,” Coppock said. “We need to synthesize many repetitions of the same credible research designs in order to be confident that our policies will work when we implement them in new places.”

Coppock earned his PhD in political science from Columbia University, MPA from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and BA from the University of Chicago. Prior to his appointment at Northwestern, he was an associate professor at Yale University.

Bridging Law and Economics to Interrogate Justice: Chika Okafor

An assistant professor of law, Chika Okafor studies how policies and institutions create and reinforce inequality, with a focus on generating evidence that can guide policy.

One strand of his research uncovers a new economic concept called “social network discrimination.” He shows that when companies rely on referrals to hire—while implementing fully “colorblind” policies—Black workers can still be left behind because their social group is smaller. A smaller network means fewer referrals, so inequality persists even when job applicants’ abilities and qualifications are equal.

His research challenges the assumption that race-neutral policies are inherently meritocratic, with wide-ranging implications across sectors.

“My findings apply well beyond hiring, to any setting in which social networks impact opportunity—from corporate boardrooms to college classrooms,” Okafor explained.

Okafor also investigates the role of politics in mass incarceration. Analyzing decades of data, he finds that prosecutors increase criminal sentencing during election years and that sentences tend to correspond to voter preferences about criminal justice. The results suggest that electoral incentives—not only laws or crime rates—have helped fuel the nation’s historically high incarceration levels.

His research on climate change communication takes a different tack: studying how the way we talk about the issue affects public action. He discovers that an asset-based approach—highlighting solutions and opportunities—more effectively engages certain populations than messages focused solely on crisis and loss.

“What excites me about Chika’s work is both its ambition and its perspective,” Papachristos said. “Whether he’s looking at climate change, labor markets, or incarceration, he centers the experiences of the most vulnerable.”

Beyond research, Okafor has led gun violence prevention programs in Chicago schools, worked in the White House on regulatory policy, and advanced human rights advocacy at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University, JD from Yale Law School, and BA in economics from Stanford University.

Illuminating Community Power in Times of Change: Elizabeth Thom

Elizabeth Thom, an assistant professor with a joint appointment in political science and environmental policy and culture, examines how large-scale economic and social transformations reshape American communities, policies, and political behavior. She focuses especially on the politics of social welfare, climate, and energy—and how inequality plays out across places.

“Liz Thom’s research examines the varied implications of relying on existing policy tools to compensate the political losers of climate adaptation,” Harbridge-Yong said. “Her research agenda complements existing strengths at IPR in public policy and inequality, while building our expertise in climate change and adaptation.”

Thom’s current book project, Withering on the Vine: Lessons from Extractive Industry Decline, is based on her prize-winning Harvard dissertation. It explores how communities in Appalachia have coped with the collapse of the coal industry.

Drawing on statistical analysis and months of fieldwork, Thom reveals that while residents often rely heavily on programs like disability insurance, negative experiences with benefit systems—combined with worsening economic conditions—have led to their political disengagement.

She argues that rebuilding trust requires community-level investments and inclusive decision-making. For example, Thom explained, forming local “policy councils” could “boost participation and give residents a say over the policies that shape their lives.”

She also investigates the politics of clean energy infrastructure. Her research indicates that long-distance transmission lines often face delays of a decade or more. The causes range from poor consultation with affected communities to uneven distribution of costs and benefits.

“Climate change demands that we find ways to speed up these processes without sacrificing the benefits that come from consulting diverse stakeholders,” Thom said. 

Thom highlights the importance of early and meaningful public engagement. She points to models like Texas’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, which successfully expanded renewable power through democratic planning.

In other work, Thom and her collaborators document broad public support for wind and solar power, retraining programs for displaced workers, and adaptation investments—even as policies like carbon taxes remain politically unpopular.

Thom earned her PhD in government and social policy from Harvard University, MSc in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford, and BA in political science and Hispanic studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Alexander Coppock is an associate professor of political science. Chika Okafor is an assistant professor of law, of economics (by courtesy), and of management and organizations (by courtesy). Elizabeth Thom is an assistant professor of political science and of environmental policy and culture. All are IPR fellows. Laurel Harbridge-Yong is a professor of political science and IPR associate director. Andrew Papachristos is the John G. Searle Professor of Sociology and IPR director.

Images courtesy of faculty

Published: September 24, 2025.