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Adam Le

Visiting Instructor in Political Science, Political Science and International Relations

Education & Professional History

San Jose State University, BA; University of Minnesota, MA

San Jose State University, BA (2017); University of Minnesota Twin Cities, MA (2021), PhD (2024 expected)

I’m currently a doctoral candidate in the Political Science department at the University of Minnesota, where I study American Politics and Political Theory with a minor in sociology.  I received my BA in Political Science at San Jose State University in California, where I’m from, and a MA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, where I now call home. My research looks at the relationship between government, community, and politics. My dissertation discusses and analyzes the different ways that marginalized groups interact with and know about politics in their daily lives. Along with the arena of electoral politics and campaigns, I focus on the everyday and mundane level to see how marginalized citizens define and reconcile with government  through their experiences with police brutality, housing evictions, social welfare provision, and so on. Importantly, my research substantively relies on qualitative methods such as ethnography and in-depth interviews as well as quantitative methods such as latent variable, survey, and regression analysis to provide a bottom-up understanding of citizenship. Outside of my dissertation, I am currently a graduate research assistant at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where I have done projects evaluating housing and gentrification as well as program evaluations of college-in-prison programming within the state of Minnesota. I am also working on a variety of projects that examine everyday politics from interactions with public services, emotion management in jails, and practices of deliberative democracy from immigrant groups in the United States.


At Carleton since 2023.

Highlights & Recent Activity

American Political Science Association Class and Inequality Faricy Award, 2021

University of Minnesota Graduate and Professional Scholarly Excellence in Equity and Diversity (SEED)
Award, Summer 2021

University of Minnesota Graduate Research Partnership Program Fellowship, Summer 2021

University of Minnesota Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Fellowship, Summer 2021

University of Minnesota Community of Scholars Program Research Grant, Spring 2021

American Political Science Association Minority Fellowship, Spring 2019

Current Courses

  • Winter 2023
    POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
  • Spring 2023
    POSC 122: Politics in America: Liberty and Equality
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Curriculum Vitae

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