Listening to Disrupt

In this session of the Media Lab Perspectives series, Deb Roy will engage his collaborator Kathy Cramer in conversation. Kathy is known for her public opinion research in which she invites herself into the conversations of members of the public to better understand their connections to each other and to their government. Her award-winning book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, brought to light rural resentment toward cities and its implications for contemporary politics, and was a go-to source for understanding votes in the 2016 presidential election. Since 2017, she has worked with Deb and Cortico to develop the Local Voices Network. They will talk about LVN as a tool of listening to disrupt the lack of understanding and the lack of power of underheard voices over public policy.  

SPEAKER BIO

Katherine J. Cramer

Professor and Natalie C. Holton Chair of Letters & Science | American Politics

Katherine Cramer (B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison 1994, Ph.D. University of Michigan 2000) is a Professor of Political Science and the Natalie C. Holton Chair of Letters & Science. Since 2018 she has also been a Visiting Professor with the Laboratory for Social Machines at the MIT Media Lab. Her work focuses on the way people in the United States make sense of politics and their place in it. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods like inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand public affairs. Her award-winning book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, brought to light rural resentment toward cities and its implications for contemporary politics, and was a go-to source for understanding votes in the 2016 presidential election (University of Chicago Press, 2016). She has also published as Katherine Cramer Walsh and is the author of Talking about Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference(University of Chicago Press, 2007), and Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life (University of Chicago Press, 2004). She was named a fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters in 2018, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, and the 2020 Margaret Mead Fellow of and American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.