February 25, 2010

Burns reappointed Director of ISR Center for Political Studies

ANN ARBOR, Mich. --- Nancy Burns has been re-appointed Director of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR). A political scientist who has studied the reasons for gender differences in political participation, she was the first woman named to lead an ISR Center in 2005.

"I am pleased to announce that Nancy will remain one of the Institute's key leaders," says ISR Director James S. Jackson. "She has shown herself to be an effective leader as well as a prolific scholar and supportive mentor to junior colleagues and students."

With the reappointment of Burns, and the recent appointment of sociologist Pamela Smock as Director of the ISR Population Studies Center, women will lead two of the five ISR Centers.

Burns joined the ISR Center for Political Studies in 1990. She received a B.A. in political science from the University of Kansas, an M.A. from Harvard University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1991.

For a detailed look at Burns's career and life, see the profile by Susan Rosegrant.

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Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world's largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and in educating researchers and students from around the world. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest digital social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site for more information.

Contact: Diane Swanbrow, swanbrow@umich.edu, (734) 647-9069