Jenna Bednar

Jenna Bednar is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and serves in the provost’s office as the inaugural faculty director of UMICH Votes and Democratic Engagement.  She leads the campus’s voting infrastructure and is co-chair of the Year of Democracy and Civic Engagement, a campus-wide collaborative effort to elevate democracy-related research, curriculum, and engagement as part of the launch of the university’s next capital campaign.  

Professor Bednar’s research focuses on how collective action builds social goods and the role that institutions play in making that collaboration possible. Current work includes: robust system design, especially of federal democracies; the interdependence of norms, culture and institutions; and place-based public policy to support human social flourishing.  This fall, her 2023 Daedalus article “Governance for Human Social Flourishing” is a foundation for an interactive exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, designed to encourage spontaneous conversation between strangers about the concepts of dignity, sustainability, community, and beauty.  In 2019, her book The Robust Federation: Principles of Design was awarded the APSA Martha Derthick Best Book Award in recognition of its enduring contribution to the study of federalism.  In 2020, she was named APSA Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar.  In the 2021-2022 year she was the Andrew W. Mellow Foundation Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  Jenna has been a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute since 2011 and an annual visitor since 1995.  She earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan and M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Educational background

• PhD in political science, Stanford University
• MA in political science, Stanford University
• BA in political science, University of Michigan