Laura Stephenson

Dr. Laura B. Stephenson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. She holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from Duke University and a BA (Honours) in Political Science and Economics from Western. Her research focuses on comparative political behaviour, elections, public opinion, and democratic engagement, with a particular emphasis on how institutional contexts shape citizen participation and representation.
Dr. Stephenson is the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Consortium on Electoral Democracy (C-Dem), a SSHRC Partnership Grant (2019–2026) that unites leading scholars, government agencies, and civil society organizations to advance understanding of democratic attitudes and behaviour in Canada. She has also held multiple SSHRC Insight and Connection grants, including recent projects examining reconciliation attitudes, democratic norms, and best practices in survey design. Her published work includes papers in journals such as Electoral Studies, Political Psychology, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Politics and Gender, Political Science Research and Methods and others as well as books such as Provincial Battles, National Prize? Elections in a Federal State (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), The Many Faces of Strategic Voting (University of Michigan Press, 2018), and Electing a Mega-Mayor: Toronto 2014 (University of Toronto Press, 2021).