Patricia Posey is a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, where she will be Assistant Professor of Political Science starting the Fall of 2022. She is a faculty affiliate of the Race and Capitalism Project and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a distinguished William Fontaine Fellow. Her research sits at the intersection of race, class, political economy, and political behavior.

Her current book project examines the effects of different banking and loan institutions on political attitudes and political participation. She is particularly interested in the effects of check cashing institutions, payday loan companies, pawnshops, and the like (collectively known as the fringe economy) on the attitudes of poor, black, and brown communities toward the state. The manuscript is based on her dissertation project, which was awarded the Urban Politics Section’s Byran Jackson Dissertation Research on Minority Politics Award and supported by the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences’ Teece Fellowship, and the Department of Political Science.

Dr. Posey’s research broadly examines the relationship between American political economy and race, focusing on the links between capitalism, urban space, technology, and political behavior.  She has a book chapter with Daniel Gillion on the effects of minority protest on government responsiveness with Cambridge University Press.  Additionally, she has published with The Washington Post Monkey Cage and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics - Politics of Color. More about her research is available here.

Prior to joining the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, Patricia Posey was a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in American Politics.  She has been recognized as a Fontaine Fellow, Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow,  American Political Science Association Ralph Bunche Scholar, and American Political Science Association Minority Fellow.

Patricia Posey received a double BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Florida in 2013.