- Associate Professor
Biography
(This link leads to an external website that is not hosted by the university. The views and content expressed are those of the faculty member and do not represent the official positions of the university.)
Thessalia (Lia) Merivaki is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor in Government and the Director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University (starting August 15, 2026) . She is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology and a member of the US Elections team at the Carter Center. Prior to joining WSU, she was Associate Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment at the McCourt School of Public Policy, the Center for Tech and Public Policy, and the Massive Data Institute. Merivaki’s research interests lie at the intersection of institutional communications, digital information, and election science, with particular emphasis on voter behavior, political communication, and trust in election integrity. In her work, Merivaki applies computational social science, machine learning, and observational and experimental methods to study how digital information environments, public policy, and polarization shape democratic participation. Since 2020, she has been co-directing the Election Officials Communication Tracker, a longitudinal data collection effort that tracks and analyzes social media communications by US election officials during election cycles
Education
- Ph.D., Political Science, University of Florida
Research Interests
Election Science, Voter Behavior, Election Reform, Political Communications, Algorithmic Design, AI and Democracy
Recent Publications
- Thessalia Merivaki and Mara Suttmann-Lea. 2026. Voter Education. In Oxford Handbook of Electoral Integrity.
- Djanogly Garai, Zachary; Baltz, Samuel; Gross, Joelle; Merivaki, Thessalia; Suttmann-Lea, Mara; Stewart, C., Charles III. 2026. “From Nuts and Bolts to Crisis Response: The Transformation of Election Officials’ Communications on Twitter, 2016-2022.” Journal of Election Administration, Research & Practice.
- Mara Suttmann-Lea, Thessalia Merivaki, and Rachel Orey. 2025. “When Election Officials Speak, Do Voters Listen? Trust-building Communications, Information seeking, and Voter Confidence in the 2022 midterm elections.” Political Communication.
- Thessalia Merivaki, Mara Suttmann-Lea, and Rachel Orey. 2025. “Does Relying on Close to Home Sources Increase Voter Confidence? Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections.” Social Science Research.
- Paul Gronke, Christian Grose, David Kimball, Bridgett King, Thessalia Merivaki, and Mara Suttmann-Lea. 2025. Local Election Administrators in the United States – The Frontline of Democracy. Palgrave McMillan.