Drop-in hours: by appointment

Caroline Tolbert CV

Caroline Tolbert, Ph.D. is a Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, where she regularly teaches graduate seminars in research methods and American politics and undergrad courses in public policy, social media and politics, and voting and elections. She was named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Scholar/Fellow for her research on voting and state election laws. She is the coauthor of Accessible Elections: How State Governments Can Help Americans Vote (2020) and Choosing the Future: Technology and Opportunity in Communities (2021), both with Oxford University Press.  The latter book won the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for the best book from the Shorenstein Center, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Accessible Elections examines absentee/mail voting, early voting, AVR and same-day registration. Tolbert and Michael Ritter published a 2024 Election Law Journal article creating an index of local government performance in managing elections, County Election Administration (CEA) (previous metrics were state level). She has published widely on political participation, voter turnout, campaigns and elections, and public opinion. She is also coauthor of Digital Cities, Digital Citizenship, and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Funded by the National Science Foundation and non-profits, her work seeks to strengthen American governance and increase participation in politics. 

Tolbert was named a Collegiate Scholar at the University of Iowa for outstanding research and teaching in 2009. The award is given annually to the top professor standing for promotion to full professor throughout the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  She is the recipient of a 2024 Career Achievement Award from the State Politics section of APSA. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder.