Ricardo Ramírez

Ricardo Ramirez is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the director of the Hesburgh Program in Public Service and a faculty fellow in the Institute for Latino Studies. He is past President of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA). He received his B.A., cum laude, from UCLA and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University. His broad research interests include political behavior, state and local politics, the politics of race and ethnicity, and immigrant politics. His research is geared to understanding the transformation of civic and political participation in American democracy by focusing on the effects of political context on participation, the political mobilization of and outreach to Latino immigrants and other minority groups, and the causes and consequences of increasing diversity among elected officials.

He is Principal Investigator of The National Latino Legislative Database Project, the most comprehensive, longitudinal data of local, state, and federal Latina and Latino elected officials from 1990 to 2020. His recent publications include Latinos and the 2016 Election: Latino Resistance and the Election of Donald Trump (Michigan State University Press 2020), Mobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics (University of Virginia Press 2013), “Unlinking fate? Discrimination, Group-consciousness, and Political Participation among Latinos and Whites,” “Selective Recruitment or Voter Neglect? Race, Place, and Voter Mobilization in 2016”