Jana Foxe

Welcome to my personal website! I am Jana Foxe, a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Washington. I have an A.B. in Political Science from Brown University, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington, where I am working on completing my dissertation on humanitarian advocacy (see Research). My work is at the intersection of international relations, public policy, and comparative politics, using a mixture of empirical methods, including quantitative, experimental and qualitative methods. 

Click around to learn more about me and my work. I can be reached at jfoxe[at]uw[dot]edu

Biography: Jana Foxe is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington's Department of Political Science. They received their A.B. in Political Science from Brown University, and their MA from the University of Washington. 

Jana's research is at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations and political economy, using mixed-methods approaches. Their research explores the behavior of non-state actors, interest groups, activist movements, political parties and NGOs, examining themes including humanitarianism, human rights, norm evolution, and responses to areas of political and ideological contestation. Their dissertation, Dilemmas of Humanitarian Advocacy explores how humanitarian aid NGOs navigate ethical and instrumental dilemmas.

Jana's work on NGO politics and activist movements includes the current working paper Aiding the Civilized? Detecting Eurocentrism in UK Humanitarian Aid Appeals for Ukraine, and the recently published Varieties of Climate Activism: Assessing Public Support for Mainstream and Unorthodox Climate Action (with Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash). Jana also recently completed a manuscript examining the role of celebrity endorsements (including Taylor Swift) on willingness to purchase carbon offsets (with Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash). Jana's work on parties and party systems includes their paper, A Shock to the System? Assessing the Party System Implications of Europe's Austerity Doctrine (under review). They have also co-authored the manuscript Comparative Homonationalisms of the Far-Right (with Jessica Sciarone, under review). 

Jana has a strong interest and personal commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education. While working at University College Dublin, Jana was a founding organizer of the EDIG Initiative and Conference in 2020. From 2022-2025, Jana worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE), where they worked on a number of NSF and NIH-funded projects. Their work involved developing a rubric to evaluate the sustainability of grant-funded initiatives in higher education, and recently published an overview of this new tool in Innovative Higher Education (with Ari Hock and Liz Litzler). 

Jana is the 2025-2026 Severyns-Ravenholt Fellow in Comparative Politics, and the chair of the 2025-2026 Severyns-Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics. 

Jana grew up in Dublin, Ireland, attending high school in Rathmines, before moving to Norway to attend UWC Red Cross Nordic. Outside of academia, Jana enjoys cycling, pickleball, vegan cooking and watching reality TV.