(Note to visitors: this is primarily provided as background for non-academic readers and the media; political scientists should refer to my academic C.V. instead.)
Dr. Christopher N. Lawrence received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Mississippi at Oxford in December 2003. He has been a political science professor at Middle Georgia State University since August 2012. He has been the chair of the Department of Political Science since July 2019; before that, he served as assistant chair of the Department of History and Political Science from 2014 to 2019.
Dr. Lawrence previously held visiting (non-tenure-track) professor positions at Millsaps College (Jackson, Miss.), Duke University (Durham, N.C.), Saint Louis University (St. Louis, Mo.), Tulane University (New Orleans, La.), and Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Va.), and was assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) in Laredo, Texas from 2008 through 2011.
Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., Dr. Lawrence earned a B.A. in political science at the University of Memphis after additional undergraduate studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, Ind.) and Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.). His interest in politics began at an early age; from 1984 to 1991, he lived in England, where as a student in British schools he developed an interest in both American and comparative politics. He is a 1993 graduate of Forest High School (Ocala, Fla.), and considers Memphis and Ocala his “hometowns.”
His research primarily focuses on mass political behavior—how people think about political issues and how they participate in politics—in the United States and other democracies. His doctoral dissertation, The Impact of Political Sophistication on the Decision-Making Processes of Voters, is an inquiry into how voters’ political knowledge affects the way in which they think about political issues and make decisions on how to vote. His current research is focused primarily on the scholarship of teaching and learning in political science and decision-making procedures within voluntary associations. His publications include articles in the journals Social Science Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Political Research Quarterly.
Dr. Lawrence also has advanced training in statistical analysis of social scientific data, and was the recipient of the inaugural Warren E. Miller Scholarship in quantitative methodology from ICPSR at the University of Michigan. He was also named the Social Sciences scholar of the year at TAMIU for the 2010 calendar year. In 2015, he was named an Open Education Group Research Fellow with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.