PhD Candidate

About

  • Website:

    https://www.erinbfitz.com/

  • Role:

    Graduate Student

  • Position:

    • PhD Candidate

  • Concentration:

    • American Politics
    • Environmental Politics and Policy
    • Public Policy/Policy Analysis

  • Department:

    • Political Science

Biography

As a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University and 2025 International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Hybl Fellow, Erin specializes in American politics, environmental politics, and public policy. Focusing on political behavior and political psychology, Erin's research asks how crises, risk attitudes, and elite decision making shape (and are shaped by) how people think about and participate in the US political system.
Erin's research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Rapoport Family Foundation, Microsoft Azure (in partnership with OpenAI and the National Science Foundation), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (in partnership with the Electoral Integrity Project). You can find Erin's recent publications in Nature Scientific Reports, British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Research & Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Global Studies Quarterly.

Publications

Fitz, Erin B. and Kyle L. Saunders. 2024. "Distrusting the Process: Electoral Trust, Operational Ideology, and Non-Voting Political Participation in the 2020 American Electorate." Public Opinion Quarterly 18(SI): 843-857.

Fitz, Erin B., Dominik A. Stecuła, Matthew P. Hitt, and Kyle L. Saunders. 2024. "Objective Numeracy Exacerbates Framing Effects from Decision-Making Under Political Risk." Scientific Reports 14(10473).

Fitz, Erin B. "Information Processing." Forthcoming in Alessandro Nai and Max Grömping (Eds.), Edward Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication.

Farhart, Christina E., Erin B. Fitz, Joanne M. Miller, and Kyle L. Saunders. 2023. "By Any Memes Necessary: Belief- and Chaos-Driven Motives for Sharing Conspiracy Theories on Social Media." Research & Politics.

Fitz, Erin B. 2023. "Going Green or Making Green? The Effects of Partisanship and Inflation on Environmental Executive Orders, 1945 - 2020." Presidential Studies Quarterly 53(1): 97 - 110.

Gricius, Gabriella and Erin B. Fitz. 2022. "Can Exceptionalism Withstand Crises? An Evaluation of the Arctic Council’s Response to Climate Change and Russia’s War on Ukraine." Global Studies Quarterly 2 (3).

Young, Laura D. and Erin B. Fitz. 2021. "Who Are the 3 Per Cent? The Connections Among Climate Change Contrarians." British Journal of Political Science 52(4):1503-1522.