Amy Erica Smith (she/they) is Professor of Political Science, as well as a Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean’s Professor, at Iowa State University. They serve as the Associate Director for Research at ISU’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. Her scholarship aims to improve how political systems represent and engage ordinary people — especially women and marginalized groups. A mostly-ordinary person herself, Smith tries to practice what she preaches as an elected member of the Ames Community School Board.
Smith’s writing wanders from academic work to journalism to stories to novels to poetry. She has published four books, including The Knowledge Polity: Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences (2022, Oxford University Press, with Paul Djupe and Anand E. Sokhey) and Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God (2019, Cambridge University Press) — now in translation, agora traduzido como Religião e a democracia brasileira (2023, Editora Vozes). Their academic articles appear in numerous peer-reviewed outlets, among them the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Perspectives on Politics. They also enjoy writing for public audiences and talking with journalists. Her geographic foci are wide-ranging: from Iowa and the US, to Kenya, to Brazil.
In the 2020-2024 academic years, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow; Amy Erica has previously held fellowships from Fulbright, the Notre Dame Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Luce/ACLS Fellowship in Journalism, Religion, and International Affairs. Smith’s research has also been funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon, Luce, and Templeton Foundations. Honors include the Theda Skocpol Emerging Scholar Award from the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association (Fall 2021), Iowa State University’s Award for Mid-Career Achievement in Research (2024), and Awards for both Mid-Career and Early Achievement in Research from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ISU (2018 and 2023). She earned her PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2011.
As a result of their own personal journey, Smith has an emerging research interest in policies and institutions that mitigate the impacts of trauma on children; they are a survivor with a proud therapeutic history that includes various diagnostic acronyms. Outside of the halls of academia, Smith is one half of a creative writing duo with Ryan Lilith Jeffrey.
The photos on this site (all excepting Darth Vader) are by the amazing Mark Looney.