Following the Questions: Jessica Reese's Journey to Political Science

Long before she became a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, Jessica Reese unknowingly began her journey to GVPT.

Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she envisioned a future in law. Graduate school wasn't on her radar, and neither was the University of Maryland. But looking back, Jessica can trace a series of moments that quietly led her to both.

The first came during her senior year of high school when she traveled to College Park to compete in the National History Day national finals. She and her mother turned the trip into a senior vacation, exploring the University of Maryland and nearby Washington, D.C. As they walked across campus, her mother made a prediction Reese never forgot.

"You're coming here at some point. I feel it."

At the time, Jessica brushed it off. She had never lived outside the South and had no reason to believe Maryland would become home.

Her interest in politics took shape a short time later during Alabama's 2017 special U.S. Senate election. Jessica watched her hometown transform as businesses closed, church activities were canceled, and neighbors paused their routines so they could vote. Seeing an entire community mobilize around one election made politics feel immediate and personal, inspiring her to shift the focus of her first research project and begin exploring Black politics for the first time.

She carried that curiosity to the University of Southern Mississippi, where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in political science. By her senior year, however, Jessica believed her next step was law school.

Everything changed during the Rising Scholars Conference hosted by the University of Maryland's Department of Government and Politics (GVPT).

After discussing her plans with faculty, GVPT Professor Kathleen Cunningham encouraged her to consider another possibility.

“Have you ever thought about pursuing a Ph.D.?”

Later that evening, she began researching the possibility from her hotel room. She discovered that she could, in fact, pursue a Ph.D. directly after college and suddenly, a path she had never imagined for herself began to feel possible.

Within months, Jessica had completely changed course, asking every recommender to rewrite letters originally intended for law school applications and applying to doctoral programs instead.

Today, Jessica is halfway through her Ph.D. in American Politics at Maryland, where her research explores Black politics, voting behavior, political psychology, race and ethnic politics, and the growing influence of media on political behavior. At the center of her work is a simple but challenging goal: understanding how identity, language and lived experiences shape the way people think about politics. She is particularly interested in the conversations that happen beyond the ballot box—how culture, community, media and everyday interactions influence political identity and how those experiences are often overlooked in traditional political science research. Through her work, Jessica hopes to tell more complete stories about Black political behavior and challenge assumptions that have long shaped the field.

As her research evolved, Jessica began to find her own voice as a scholar.

Rather than chasing questions she believed others wanted her to answer, Jessica learned to trust the ideas that genuinely interested her. That shift was reinforced by the faculty mentors who helped shape her development as a scholar.

Working as a research assistant for GVPT Chair Antoine Banks gave Jessica an inside look at how impactful research is built—from crafting thoughtful research designs to asking bigger questions. His approach challenged Jessica to think beyond data and focus on the story each project was trying to tell, a lesson that continues to shape her own research today.

GVPT Associate Professor Chryl Laird challenged Jessica in a different way. When Jessica found herself drifting away from the questions she was most passionate about, Laird encouraged her to return to the ideas that first sparked her curiosity rather than pursuing what she thought others expected.

GVPT Associate Professor Fiona Shen-Bayh encouraged Jessica to look outside political science, particularly to fields like linguistics and psychology, as she developed her research ideas.

Together, those experiences helped Jessica turn her intellectual curiosity into meaningful scholarship.

Jessica has presented research at the Midwest Political Science Association, co-authored work examining Black art and emotional complexity, earned two Dean's Fellowship Grants from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and was selected as an American Political Science Association Diversity Fellow. Outside of her own research, she also mentors undergraduate students, hoping to offer the same encouragement and guidance that faculty mentors once provided her.

From a high school trip to College Park to becoming a Ph.D. researcher studying the questions that first captured her attention years ago, Jessica's journey is a reminder that sometimes the path you're meant to follow finds you long before you realize you're walking it.

 

Published on Wed, 08/26/2026 - 11:00