Katherine J. Cramer

Katherine Cramer is the Virginia Sapiro Professor of Political Science and Natalie C. Holton Chair of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Visiting Professor with the Center for Constructive Communication at the MIT Media Lab. She earned her BA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on the way people in the United States make sense of politics, their connections to each other and to their governments. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods such as inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand public affairs. Her award-winning book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, has been a go-to resource for understanding the rural vs. urban divide in the United States and around the globe. She is a co-founder of the Local Voices Network (lvn.org). She is a fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences; and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.