Ursula Hackett, Ph.D.

ursulahackett@gmail.com

Associate Professor

University of Oxford

Year of PhD: 2014

Address: Rothermere American Institute

City: Oxford, England - OX1 3UB

Country: United Kingdom

Website

About Me:

I am the Churchill Associate Professor of US Politics at the University of Oxford, in association with the Rothermere American Institute and The Queen's College. I specialise in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the United States, with a particular focus on religion, race, and education. My work fits broadly within the American Political Development (APD) tradition. I am currently working on a project on the politics of redistricting and how state legislators anticipate and seek to forestall legal challenges. My work has been published in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Policy Studies Journal, Studies in American Political Development, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, and Religion & Politics. My Oxford doctorate won the Political Studies Association's Sir Walter Bagehot Prize in Government and Public Administration. My research monograph America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State is out with Cambridge University Press, and my study skills book Brilliant Essays is published by Macmillan Study Skills. I speak regularly at Chatham House, train junior diplomats in American politics, and help to set the UK’s strategic priorities through my contributions to the Foreign Office Directors’ Expert Group. In 2020 I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and I won both the Political Studies Association’s Sir Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching, and a Royal Holloway College Excellence Teaching Prize. In 2023-4 I was a British Academy Midcareer Fellow.

Research Interests

Public Policy

State and Local Politics

Religion & Politics

Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Public Administration

Education Policy

American Political Development

Law And Politics

Political Representation

Countries of Interest

United States

My Research:

America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State
Cambridge University Press

What explains the explosive growth of school vouchers in the last two decades? In America’s Voucher Politics, Ursula Hackett shows that the roots of the voucher movement lie in America’s foundational struggles over religion, race, and the role of government versus the private sector. Drawing upon original datasets, archival materials, and more than one hundred candid interviews with policymakers across the United States, Hackett shows that policymakers and political advocates use strategic policy design and rhetoric to hide the role of the state when their policy goals become legally controversial. Patiently, tactically, iteratively – over more than sixty years of voucher litigation – white supremacists, accommodationists, and individualists have honed this strategy of attenuated governance in court. By learning from previous mistakes and anticipating downstream effects, policymakers can avoid painful defeats, gain a secure legal footing, and entrench their policy commitments in spite of the surging power of rivals.