Parrish Bergquist is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Political Science Department. She studies the political determinants of environmental policy—in the U.S. and abroad—with a particular focus on public will and political behavior.

The three major strands of her research focus on explaining the development of attitudes and policy views about climate change and the environment, examining how public environmental concern is activated in the political system, and explaining the drivers and consequences of state-level climate policies in the polarized U.S. political context. Throughout her work, she focuses on environmental politics to develop and test theories on polarization, public opinion, persuasion, and mobilization. In turn, she applies these lines of theory to one of the most important contemporary policy challenges. Bergquist received my Ph.D. from MIT in political science and urban studies & planning in 2019.