Professor Schenk’s research focuses on the ways everyday people learn about and discuss politics. Her current book project, informed by her dissertation, explores how everyday political discussions in online spaces shape political identity. Methodologically, she pulls from both political science and data science, using survey experiments and big data techniques to gain a fuller picture of both individual behavior and macro-level trends.
In the field of gender and politics, she conducts research that will help us understand how to increase descriptive representation and implement policies that support women and gender-diverse individuals. This includes work on women in Congress with Cory Manento and Kristen Essel, and work on public persuasion and abortion attitudes with Kristen Essel and Paul Testa.
As part of a research team with Robert A. Blair, Jessica Gottleib, and Christopher Woods, she is also researching questions related to political polarization in the US. How can we convince people to participate in skill-building workshops that reduce levels of affective polarization? And, once they are there, how do we ensure the workshops don't have unintended consequences, such as increasing tolerance for racism? The team’s research is based on the results of a large-scale field experiment conducted in cooperation with an organization devoted to depolarizing voters.