Elizabeth Beaumont

About

Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota
Research: A Republic of Rights: The Role of Public Guardianship of Rights in American Constitutional Development
Fellowship period: Academic year, 2009-10

Elizabeth Beaumont is a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution for 2009–2010. She is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, where she currently holds an honorary McKnight Landgrant Professorship. Beaumont’s research focuses on the role of civic and political education and engagement in a constitutional democracy. Drawing on Aristotle’s understanding of constitutions as including the “way of life of citizens,” she is interested in the relationship between liberal and democratic theory and civic identities and practices: Why and how do people develop democratic character and political agency and what is the relationship between individual and collective practices and the character of political institutions? Beaumont examines these questions through work on several aspects of historical and contemporary politics. She is a coauthor of Education Citizens (Wiley 2003) and Educating for Democracy (Wiley 2008) and has authored a number of other chapters, articles, and reviews. She is currently working on a book exploring how public involvement has shaped constitutional rights and politics in the United States. Previously, Beaumont was a research scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where she helped lead the foundation’s multiyear research studies of undergraduate civic education. She is a past recipient of a fellowship from Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Society and the Individual at the University of Minnesota. Beaumont has received awards and grants supporting her research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the CIRCLE Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts. She is a member of the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Civic Engagement; she holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University and a BA, cum laude, from Pomona College.