Our Team

DIRECTORS

Lilliana Mason:
Lab Director, SNF Agora Institute Professor of Political Science

Lilliana Mason is the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity and co-author, with Nathan P. Kalmoe, of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy. She received her PhD in political psychology from Stony Brook University and her BA in politics from Princeton University. Her research on American partisan identity, social sorting, and political violence has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics, and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Democracy Fund, Protect Democracy, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Scott Warren:
Lab Director, SNF Agora Fellow

Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently leading an initiative focused on exploring, researching, and convening a pro-democracy conservative agenda in the US, organizing convenings focused on bridging long-term and short-term fixes for democratic reform, and supporting cities in efforts to promote civic participation and democratic engagement. At SNF Agora, he also launched Democracy Moves, an international network of youth activists pushing for democratic change, which is now part of Restless Development, and helped Johns Hopkins University in exploring its own role as a beacon of civic engagement and democracy. He has also advised USAID on youth civic and political engagement. Warren is the founder of the national civics education organization Generation Citizen, where he currently serves on the Board of Directors. He served as the organization’s CEO for more than 11 years, helping grow Generation Citizen to become one of the preeminent civics education organizations in the country, promoting action civics across diverse geographies through best-in-class programming and concrete policy change. Warren published a book in 2019, Generation Citizen: The Power of Youth in Politics, and was named an Echoing Green Fellow in 2010, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow in 2012. In addition to currently teaching at JHU, Warren has taught courses focused on social entrepreneurship and democratic erosion at Brown University, Tufts University, Stanford University, and the University of California San Diego. He continues to write on subjects ranging from youth political engagement to African politics to sports, and has been published and featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, San Diego Union Tribune, Sports Illustrated, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Providence Journal.

Sophia Winer:
Lab Manager, SNF Agora Research Program Coordinator

Sophia Winner supports research and program coordination at SNF Agora. A graduate of the University of Maryland with degrees in Government and Politics and Economics, she focuses on civic engagement, economic policy, and democratic participation.

RESEARCHERS

Leann Mclaren:
Postdoctoral Fellow

Leann Mclaren is a 2024 PhD in political science from Duke University with a certificate in African and African American studies. She is also a Provost Postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins in the political science department. She studies race in American politics, focusing on Black political behavior, social identity, and immigration politics. Mclaren’s work has been published in journals such as The American Political Science Review, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, and Politics, Groups, and Identities. Her research has won multiple awards and grants from the American Political Science Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation, among others. Mclaren’s innovative book project delves into the strategies and perceptions of Black candidates with ‘invisible identities’, particularly immigrant identity, in political campaigns. This groundbreaking research involves the collection of the first known dataset of Black immigrant politicians elected in the US. Her unique approach combines content analysis and survey experiments to analyze these candidates’ identity strategies, potentially reshaping our understanding of political campaigns. Mclaren’s book project showcases how Black candidates with “invisible identities” use strategies to maintain support from Black and white audiences and secure elections as historic firsts. Her other projects include mapping Black political behavior in the realms of social movements, identity, and political participation.

Marie Fester:
PhD Student, Department of Political Science

Marie is currently a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, she worked as a Policy Analyst on the Intergovernmental Affairs teams at Transport Canada. Her BA and MA in Political Science were both completed at McGill University. Broadly, her research interests focus on explaining attitudinal and behavioural change, based on theories from social psychology, behavioural economics and, the economics of uncertainty. She is particularly interested in the impact of happiness and life satisfaction on political behavior, the effect of trade on income inequality, and the success of women political candidates. As a research assistant, she has also worked on projects relating to the political behavior of Generation Z and the political socialization of youth.

Larissa Morikawa:

Alex Torpey:
PhD Student, Department of Political Science

Alex Torpey (he/him) is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. He studies American politics with a focus on political parties, campaign strategies and technology, and the political consulting industry. At the Democracy and Division Lab, Alex studies how media consumption patterns relate to pro-democracy attitudes and behavior. In his other work, he is interested in connecting long-run institutional changes (to what parties do, and how) to contemporary mass and elite behavior. Previously, Alex worked for political campaigns and nonprofits. He holds a B.A in economics from UCLA and an MA in political science from The Johns Hopkins University.

Natalie Bernstein:

Grace Gerber:

Bryce Leiberman:
Undergraduate Researcher

Bryce Leiberman is a political science student with a minor in philosophy whose research focuses on political polarization, gender, and the impact of social media on societal division. He is also interested in democratic reform, particularly ranked-choice voting as a means to strengthen civic engagement and reduce polarization. His recent publications include The Death of Real Discourse, Opinion: A future voter’s call for reform, and How Exercise and Group Therapy Affect Substance Abuse Recovery (Journal of Addiction Recovery).

David Sullivan:
Undergraduate Researcher

David Sullivan is a senior double majoring in Math and Political science with a minor in Economics. His academic work centers on American politics, with a particular interest in understanding democratic backsliding through the lenses of political economy and political psychology. He is currently working with Alex and Bryce to study how media consumption patterns among Republicans both shape and are shaped by issue attitudes, institutional trust, and identity. While he plans to pursue law school and a career in public policy law, David intends to remain with the lab after his graduation in December 2025 to continue contributing to this important project.