Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies
Cara J. Wong
Political behavior, race and ethnicity, immigration, and citizenship
- Office
- 424 David Kinley Hall, 1407 W. Gregory Dr., Urbana, IL 61801
- Institution
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research focus
- Political psychology and identity
- Communities, place, and local context
- Race, immigration, and public opinion
- Citizenship, belonging, and civic obligation
Affiliations
- Cline Center for Advanced Social Research
- Center for Social and Behavioral Science
- Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
- Center for Global Studies
About
Cara J. Wong studies how Americans define their communities and who they believe deserves public support. Her book Boundaries of Obligation in American Politics (Cambridge University Press) examines how geographic, racial, and national identities shape these judgments. Recent work, including a 2025 article in BJPS, investigates how people's perceptions of their local communities affect their political attitudes.
Wong is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, where she is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Head for Graduate Programs in the Political Science Department. She is past president of the Political Psychology section of the American Political Science Association, co-founder of the Politics of Identity Across Subfields (PIAS) at MPSA, and co-founder of the Intergroup Relations Workshop Network. She has been a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation.
On this site
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