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Ioana Panaitiu

PhD in Political Science

Graduated in 2020

Ioana Panaitiu received her PhD in Political Science at Northeastern University in 2020, specializing in American Government & Politics and Comparative Politics. She has a strong background and interest in race & U.S. nationalism, as well as political communication, psychology and methodology. Ioana served as a Teaching Assistant for professor Michael Tolley’s Introduction to American Government, Ioannis Livanis’ Introduction to Comparative Politics, Dov Waxman’s Introduction to International Relations, and David Rochefort’s graduate Quantitative Techniques seminar.

Related Schools & Departments

Research Interests

Ioana’s research is primarily focused on the role that race and dehumanization play in narratives surrounding U.S. national identity, especially as exhibited in discourse on social media platforms. Ioana is interested in exploring new methodologies that can capture covert racism, and as part of this she is currently working on a paper titled “Trajectories of Hate: Mapping Cultural and Biological Racism on Twitter,” together with Northeastern’s Nick Beauchamp and Boston University’s Spencer Piston.

Prior Work

Prior to Northeastern, Ioana completed her BA at the University of New England in Maine, majoring in Political Science with a minor in Philosophy. During her undergraduate career, she served as a Research Assistant to Dr. David Livingstone Smith. Her research in the departments of Political Science and History & Philosophy earned her distinctions such as the Sophomore and Junior Awards in Academic Excellence, Outstanding Student Researcher, and the Jacques Downs Excellence Award for her entire undergraduate career, while her Senior thesis was awarded the university’s SURE grant, as well as Honors from the College of Arts and Sciences. While at UNE, Ioana also worked as a Congressional Intern, Resident Advisor and Circulation Desk Assistant, and co-founded TEDxUNE, one of the few student-led TED organizations in the U.S..

Publications

Ioana G. Panaitiu (2019): Apes and anticitizens: simianization and U.S. national identity discourse, Social Identities, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2019.1679621

Smith, David Livingstone and Ioana Panaitiu. 2016. “Aping the Human Essence: Simianization as Dehumanization.” In  Wulf D. Hund, Charles W. Mills, and Silvia Sevastiani (eds.), Simianization, Apes, Gender, Class, and Race. pp. 77-104. Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag.

Smith, David Livingstone and Ioana Panaitiu. 2016. “Horror Sanguinis.” Journal of Common Knowledge 22(1):69-80. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3322882.

Conference Presentations

Panaitiu, Ioana.  “Apes and Anticitizens: Simianization and U.S. National Identity Discourse.”  Paper accepted for the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, IL. April 2018.

Panaitiu, Ioana. “The Dehumanizing Character of U.S. Nationalism.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association. New Orleans, LA. January 2018.

Panaitiu, Ioana. “#propaganda: Social Media Propaganda and Public Opinion.” Paper presented at SURE Research Symposium. Biddeford, ME. April 2015.

Panaitiu, Ioana. “#propaganda: Social Media and Partisan Political Information.” Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association. Boston, MA. November 2014.

Research Interests:

American Politics: Political Communication, Race relations & U.S. Nationalism, Political Psychology.

Political methodology: Computational Statistics, Quantitative Text Analysis, Machine Learning, Experimental Designs, Latent Variable Analysis.

Degrees Earned and Institutions:

PhD, Northeastern University

BA, University of New England

Curriculum Vitae

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