University of Kentucky Department of Political Science

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Lexington, KY
University of Kentucky Department of Political Science

This is the page for the University of Kentucky Department of Political Science. The Department was founded in 1923. was awarded in the late 1930s.

It established a masters program shortly thereafter and the first Ph.D. Dr. Amry Vandenbosch, a well known scholar in international relations and one of the drafters of the United Nations Charter in 1945, served as Head of the Department from 1931 until 1957. As political science became more quantitative in the 1960s, the Department shifted its emphasis. This began in 1963 when Dr. S. Sidney Ulmer

, a renowned scholar in judicial behavior, was recruited as Chair. Professors such as Malcolm Jewell, Dean Jaros, Bradley Canon and William Lyons soon established a pattern of producing highly visible and highly influential scholarship, one that continued into the 1980s and 1990s through the work of researchers such as Lee Sigelman, William Lowery, Pamela Conover, Stanley Feldman, and Bill Berry. Several faculty members became leaders in the profession, serving as editors of major journals, presidents of regional associations or chairs of American Political Science Association sections. It is a tradition that has carried through to the present, despite a shrinking faculty size and a growing workload, as the prominent careers of long-serving professors such as Mark Peffley, Karen Mingst, and Don Gross can attest. Over the last 40 years, the graduate program also has produced its share of influential politicial scientists, including Micheal Giles, Jim Garand, Todd Shields, Kirby Goidel, Neal Woods and Laura Neack. The undergraduate program, meanwhile, has increased considerably in size over time; more than 500 declared majors has now become the norm. These students regularly go on to important careers not only in government, politics, and policy, but also in law, business, medicine, and other occupations.

05/27/2026

Robert Kahne, a UK Poli Sci undergrad alum, has announced that he's running for Louisville's Jefferson County School Board.

05/20/2026

“Whenever we have a competitive race, the money floods in,” said Stephen Voss, a professor at the University of Kentucky and expert in Kentucky politics. “What’s unique about this race is that the forces pumping money into Kentucky aren’t the usual ones. Usually it’s sort of standard left-right attempts to take down our Republican incumbent, or in the case of Gov. [Andy] Beshear, take down the Democratic incumbent. This one, we’re sucking in money for different reasons.”

The Kentucky house primary was hugely nationalized, with money pouring in from across the country.

05/19/2026

Prof. Voss (at left) is live and in the studio with Spectrum News 1, acting as their political analyst as Kentucky primary election results roll in.

05/15/2026

Voss, the professor of politics, said the senator’s team knows the candidates have to walk a fine line.

“McConnell’s people are realistic enough to understand that the candidates need to distance themselves from McConnell,” he said, “but that’s different than openly disrespecting or attacking him.”

Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell is becoming a test of the Republican Party’s transformation under President Donald Trump. Rep.

05/06/2026

Congratulations to newly minted UK Poli Sci Ph.D. Alex (Smith) Farone, recipient of a prestigious internal teaching award.

The University of Kentucky recently recognized exceptional faculty and graduate teaching assistants with Outstanding Teaching Awards during the 2026 UK Faculty Awards Ceremony April 30.

04/15/2026

UK Poli Sci Ph.D. Ridvan Peshkopia continues to pursue his research agenda on political-science education:

The traditional qualitative–quantitative debate in Political Science often overlooks a deeper question: how students’ individual dispositions shape their methodological preferences. We argue that personality traits may influence whether students …

04/08/2026

We're especially grateful to Reggie Thomas, the state senator who represents the center of Fayette County, for taking on several of our students as legislative interns. He even enhanced their educational experience by letting his interns propose a resolution - which, we're told, passed unanimously last week. Pictured here with Sen. Thomas are two UK interns, Lucia Saravia and John Riley Kaufman.

11/24/2025

Former UK Poli Sci grad student Rajan Kumar discussing the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

As Russian forces tighten their grip and Donald Trump pushes a pro-Moscow peace plan, Kyiv faces an “impossible choice” between national dignity and losing crucial Western support

11/06/2025

Research by UK Poli Sci Ph.D. Ridvan Peshkopia just out, exploring the linkage between personality traits and support for human rights.

In the debate between the universal versus contextual dimension of attitudes toward human rights, we argue that personality can explain differences in support for human rights, and that different p...

10/16/2025

The Kentucky Supreme Court came to UK's Rosenberg College of Law, and Prof. Mike Zilis' Constitutional Law cohort went to the Kentucky Supreme Court! The group pictured here watched oral arguments for Beshear v. Coleman. Other political science majors, for example those in UK-BLUE, watched an earlier hearing for a contest between Gov. Beshear and Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell.

Address

1615 Patterson Office Tower/University Of
Lexington, KY
40506

Telephone

+18592577029

Website

http://polisci.as.uky.edu/

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