Jaime Settle is an assistant professor of government at the College of William & Mary, where she has taught for six years, co-directs the Social Science Research Methods Center, and founded and directs the Social Networks and Political Psychology, or SNaPP, Lab. 

Settle is an accomplished researcher in the fields of political psychology and communication, where she specializes in understanding Americans’ day-to-day experiences with politics in both face-to-face and online contexts. She has published 18 articles, including publications in Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her forthcoming book, “Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America” (Cambridge), is “poised to have a major impact,” as noted by a leading scholar who reviewed it. In 2014, Settle was awarded a highly competitive National Science Foundation grant, and in 2017 she received the Distinguished Recent Graduate Award from the University of Richmond.

Settle teaches courses in American politics and political behavior including a seminar about political communication on social media and a course taught in Washington, D.C., about the causes and consequences of political polarization. In addition to her classroom teaching, Settle has worked closely with more than 40 students in the SNaPP Lab. She is a dedicated mentor who has advised more — and more award-winning — honors theses than anyone else in her department. Not only does she develop unique research opportunities for her own students, she is a leader on campus in advocating for and facilitating such opportunities for others through her establishment of the SSRMC and her role in a collaborative effort to create and steer a new data science program.

Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Settle earned her B.A. in political science from the University of Richmond (2007) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California-San Diego (2012).