Madison Schramm
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Madison Schramm is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on international security, the domestic politics of foreign policy, political psychology, and gender and foreign policy. Her current book project explores the dynamics that intensify conflict between democracies and personalist regimes.
The manuscript builds on work in political science, psychology, and sociology using archival research and statistical analysis, and emphasizes the role of social identity theory and cognitive biases in shaping democratic elites’ threat perception. It is an expansion of Schramm’s doctoral dissertation, which won the 2020 Kenneth N. Waltz Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association’s International Security Section.
Schramm is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and has manuscripts published or forthcoming exploring gender and conflict initiation (Security Studies), democratic constitutional systems and conflict (Political Science Quarterly), threat perception in liberal democracies (Journal of Global Security Studies — forthcoming), and diversity and inclusion in post-conflict states (Book chapter, Oxford University Press).
She has working papers in progress and articles under review exploring the relationship between gender and corruption; instability and the election of women heads of government; and the temporal variation in US covert action.
Schramm’s commentary and reviews have been published in Foreign Affairs, the Texas National Security Review, the Atlantic, the Christian Science Monitor, the Duck of Minerva, and CFR.org. She received her PhD from Georgetown University in Government (2019) and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College (2009). She has previously worked with the Council on Foreign Relations; the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Yale University's Political Violence FieldLab; the U.S. Army War College; Carnegie Mellon University; the University of Notre Dame; and the RAND Corporation.