Jacob Brown

Jacob Brown is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University, having joined the Department of Political Science in 2023. He received his Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy and M.A. in Government from Harvard University in 2022, along with an M.S. in Urban Studies from the London School of Economics. Prior to his current position, Brown served as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics from 2022 to 2023. His research specializes in the causes and consequences of political segregation, examining how neighborhood environments influence political behavior, partisan affiliation, voting patterns, and attitudes toward democratic institutions. Brown is also affiliated with Boston University's Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering as a Junior Faculty Fellow and serves as a 2025 Public Impact Scholar for the Initiative on Cities.

Brown has earned significant recognition for his scholarship, including selection as a 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which awarded him a $200,000 research stipend for his project 'The Behavioral Consequences of Political Segregation,' exploring the effects of living among political opponents on democratic norms, political violence, and institutional support. His publications appear in leading journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Science Advances, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and Political Science Research and Methods. Key works include 'Exposure to the American flag polarizes partisan prejudice' with Ryan D. Enos (Nature Human Behaviour, 2021), 'Childhood cross-ethnic exposure predicts political behavior seven decades later' (Science Advances, 2021), 'Measuring and Modeling Neighborhoods' (American Political Science Review, 2024), 'Partisan Conversion Through Neighborhood Influence: How Voters Adopt the Partisanship of Their Neighbors' (Journal of Politics), and 'The Obama Effect? Race, First-time Voting, and Future Participation' (Political Science Research and Methods, 2024). With over 670 citations on Google Scholar, Brown's contributions have advanced understanding of partisan geography and urban political dynamics, featured in university news and academic seminars.