Erika Coe

Erika Coe is a political theorist with teaching and research interests in democratic theory, civic engagement, and the politics of emotion. She is a SNF Paideia Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches The Politics of Emotions in the political science department, helps facilitate the Slow Dialogue project, and contributes to a research initiative on cultivating deliberative dispositions in the classroom. 

She is currently pursuing two lines of research. The first, based on her dissertation, investigates the promises and limitations of using the concept of depolarization as a framework for democratic dialogue. The second examines the role of critical affect in civic and higher education, with particular attention to its potential to bridge the gap between grassroots civic practices and public decision-making. Together, her work contributes to ongoing debates about how to reorient dialogue from a focus on stability to one oriented toward survival in increasingly polarized societies. 

Erika earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana. Outside academia, she builds community through biking and yoga.