Rebecca J Kreitzer

Title & Affiliation
Assistant Professor Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Scholar-in-Residence Politics and Policy Research Program

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2015
  • M.A., University of Iowa, 2012
  • B.A., Macalester College, 2007
Bio

Rebecca J. Kreitzer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Before her appointment at UNC-CH, she received a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Iowa.

Her research focuses on questions of women’s political representation, gender and sexuality politics, how society socially constructs group identities, and the spread of policy across U.S. states. She investigates both the behavior of political actors and formal institutions to explain public policy in the 50 states. Some of her current work focuses on the changing landscape of reproductive health in the states, how policy affects groups of people in different ways (for instance, white women, women of color, men of color, LGBTQ identified people), as well as how Democratic and Republican women differentially represent their constituents in the name of representing women.

Her work has been published in several academic journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly, as well as in edited book volumes. She is also frequently referenced in the media as an expert in abortion and reproductive health, and has recently been quoted in or written for The Atlantic, PolitiFact, Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog and the LSE U.S. Politics and Policy blog.

Her personal webpage is available at http://rkreitzer.web.unc.edu/.

Research Interests

  • Abortion and reproductive health
  • Intersectionality
  • Policy diffusion
  • Political representation
  • Sexuality politics
  • Social constructions of politically relevant groups