Profile
Jennifer M. Piscopo holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Wellesley College and an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge. She is the first woman in her family to attend college and the first person to receive a graduate degree. This distinction has made fairness and equality central to her research, teaching, and service. For her dissertation, she explores the policy consequences of Latin America’s gender quota laws—affirmative action rules that compel political parties to nominate specified percentages of women to public office. This work asks questions about who sits at the decision-making table in democratic societies, and why diversity matters for the distribution of rights and entitlements. She has published in Parliamentary Affairs and Politics & Gender, and her co-edited volume on quota policies is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is a former Gates Cambridge Scholar and current co-chair of the Gates Scholars’ Alumni Association. She previously served as the co-director of the Woman in Political Science (WIPS) Program at the University of California, San Diego, where she advocated for the greater inclusion of women and minority students into the graduate program. She will receive her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego, in June 2011. For Fall 2011, she has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Salem College, an all-women’s liberal arts school in North Carolina. Outside of academia, she enjoys traveling, hiking, yoga, and reading books on her Kindle.
