My Academic Bio
Dean Lacy is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. His research and teaching seek answers to fundamental questions in politics: How do political institutions, laws, and other rules shape how people behave and express their needs and opinions, and how can we design institutions, laws, and policies that promote the best human behavior and prevent the worst?
Several grants from the National Science Foundation have supported Dean’s research, which won the American Political Science Association’s award for best dissertation in political economy, the Midwest Political Science Association’s Robert Durr award for best paper applying quantitative methods to a substantive problem in political science, and the Society for Political Methodology’s Harold Gosnell Award. Dean’s research appears in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and many other academic journals.
Dean held teaching appointments at Duke University and the Ohio State University prior to arriving at Dartmouth. He held a research appointment at Stanford University and was a fellow at the Center for Law, Policy, and Social Science at the Ohio State University School of Law. He has taught an intensive summer course in statistics for law professors, and he teaches a course in game theory for Ph.D. students from all over the globe at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. He regularly teaches courses on American politics, elections and voting behavior, the presidency, political applications of game theory, and research methods.
Dean directs Dartmouth’s new Program in Politics and Law, advises the Dartmouth Political Union and serves on the faculty council of the Rockefeller Center. He was an election observer during the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan. He has served as an admission consultant to graduate and law schools, consulted for several local and federal government agencies, and worked in various capacities for several political campaigns.
Dean earned his B.A. at the University of Virginia and Ph.D. from Duke University. He lives in Hanover with his wife and four children.
