Georgia Kernell successfully defended her PhD dissertation in political science at Columbia University in September 2008. Her research interests include political parties, methodology, behavior and comparative institutions. Her dissertation, "Political Party Organizations and Representation: Party Responsiveness, Candidate Heterogeneity and Voter Behavior in Mature Parliamentary Systems," examines how a party's organization--especially its decentralization with respect to candidate selection, resource allocation, and recruitment of delegates to the national party convention--shapes its electoral appeal and constituent support. The thesis uses an original data set of party institutions, party statutes, and interviews for 66 parties in 20 mature parliamentary democracies. Georgia also studies quantitative methods, and has two publications in Political Analysis. Currently, Georgia is working on several projects that examine the institutions that regulate party diversity, the normative implications of party organizations for representation, and the information strategies that affect consumers' economic forecasts. During the spring she will teach a freshman seminar on "Comparative Political Parties and Party Systems" at Penn, where she is a postdoctoral fellow in Penn's Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism.