Henry Watson
I am a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
I study American Government, specifically urban politics and housing politics. My dissertation is titled "The Politics of Local Affordable Housing Policy in the U.S.". I study a cluster of affordable housing policy instruments which represent an urban locality's approach to affordable housing, and theorize that these policy mixes can be partially explained by the relative power of key housing interest groups at the local level. I use original quantitative data collection to typologize local affordable housing policy mixes and the housing interest group environments of major U.S. cities over time. Complementing this quantitative research, I use a qualitative case study approach to examine the mechanisms by which interest groups influence housing policy at the local level.
In addition to my dissertation research, I am pursuing publication of a co-authored piece on eviction in Washington, DC and a solo-authored piece on the policy diffusion of Source of Income Anti-Discrimination policies. My research has been presented at conferences hosted by the American Political Science Association (2022), the Midwest Political Science Association (2023), the Southern Political Science Association (2023), and the Association of Public Policy Analysis & Management (2021, 2022).
I have worked as a teaching assistant at Georgetown University for five semesters and was the junior instructor for the incoming government PhD student math camp in 2022. In Summer, 2023 I will be the instructor of record for an original class on The Politics of Housing.