Allison Verrilli

Welcome! My name is Allie Verrilli (she/her) and I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Texas at Austin.

My research centers on the politics of spatial inequality with a particular focus on urban politics, gentrification, race, housing, and policing. In my dissertation, I examine under what conditions gentrification influences local political behavior. I argue that gentrifiers are a politically significant group whose race and class positionality and neighborhood perceptions lead to heightened political engagement and distinct political attitudes. This engagement, in turn, influences public goods provision and public policy with consequences for local communities.

Other ongoing projects investigate how socio-geographic boundaries shape policing and the relationship between perceptions of crime and political behavior. I work with large-scale administrative records, geospatial data, survey experiments, and causal inference techniques. My work has been supported by the NSF/APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and has been published in Urban Affairs Review and Perspectives on Politics.

Prior to graduate school, I received my B.A. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame. I then worked as a paralegal at a civil rights law firm in Washington, D.C.