Dr. Emily Van Duyn

Biography

Emily Van Duyn is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Originally from Illinois, Van Duyn earned her PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with the Program on Democracy and the Internet. Her research explores how people talk about politics and the role of digital media in facilitating community and political discourse. She addresses questions using diverse methodologies, including surveys, experiments, interviews, and ethnography. Her recent book from Oxford University Press, "Democracy Lives in Darkness: People Keep Politics Secret," focuses on the reasons individuals express political opinions publicly while organizing secret opinions. Over the years, her work has examined secret group dynamics among progressives in rural Texas and their fears of a conservative community, emphasizing how they meet to discuss politics and take political action. Van Duyn's work is concerned with the effects of social, geographic, and political polarization, which threaten liberal democratic norms. Her current book project explores the implications of political polarization in romantic and familial relationships in the broader context of liberal democracy in the United States. Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as the Journal of Communication and Political Communication, and has been featured in major publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Research Interests

Experience