Presenter Bio - Dr. Lauren Bell
Lauren C. Bell is the inaugural James L. Miller Professor of Political Science at Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland, Virginia. In addition, she currently serves as the college's Associate Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs.
Dr. Bell joined the faculty at Randolph-Macon in Fall 1999 and served as Associate Dean of the College from Fall 2007 until Spring 2014 and as Dean of Academic Affairs from Fall 2014 until Spring 2022. She is a three-time winner of the College’s Thomas Branch Award for Excellence in Teaching (2002, 2004, 2019), and in 2017 was recognized as one of ten national Outstanding First-Year Advocates by the National Resource Center on the First Year Experience and Students in Transition. In 2023, Dr. Bell was awarded the Samuel Nelson Gray Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor Randolph-Macon College bestows upon its faculty members.
Dr. Bell holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Wooster (Ohio) and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at The University of Oklahoma. She is a former American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow (1997-98) on the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and a former United States Supreme Court fellow at the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, DC. In Fall 2015, Dr. Bell was a short-term visiting scholar on the Faculty of Law at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Bell is the author of Filibustering in the U.S. Senate (Cambria Press, 2011), Warring Factions: Interest Groups, Money, and the New Politics of Senate Confirmation (The Ohio State University Press, 2002) and The U.S. Congress, A Simulation for Students (Cengage, 2nd ed. 2022) as well as co-author of Slingshot: The Defeat of Eric Cantor (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2015) and Perspectives on Political Communication: A Case Approach (Allyn & Bacon, 2008), and co-editor of Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics (Palgrave McMillan, 2024). In addition, her scholarship has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, The Journal of Legislative Studies, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Social Science Quarterly, Judicature, and the Journal of the Society for American Music.
