Welcome! I am a postdoctoral associate in the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University. In 2025, I will join Yale’s Department of Political Science as an Assistant Professor. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, where I was affiliated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Previously, I was a Democracy Center Visiting Scholar at the University of Rochester and earned my B.A. in the Political Science Department at UCLA.

My research centers on the U.S. Congress, money in politics, electoral campaigns, and political organizations. Much of this work investigates the interplay between candidates’ self-presentations and financial contributors’ strategies in congressional campaigns, with an emphasis on primary elections. Broadly, I combine original data, natural language processing, causal inference tools, experiments, and structural estimation of formal models to further our understanding of strategic interactions among political elites.

For inquiries, feel free to contact me at mellissa.meisels@yale.edu.