About

I am a PhD student in comparative politics at the University of California, Berkeley. I am broadly interested in political parties, right-wing politics, nationalism, and elites across Western democracies with a particular emphasis on French politics. Methodologically, I focus on developing comparative case studies, archival methods, and observational causal inference techniques to test theories.

Recently, my research has centered the political leaders of populist parties with an emphasis on how party leader identity and background can combine with rhetoric to enable some historically fringe parties to become mainstream. I am primarily interested in right-wing populist parties like Le Rassemblement national in France, but I want to investigate how these ideas apply to left-wing populist parties like Sinn Féin in Ireland as well. My developing dissertation project will center how mainstream conservative parties in Europe have fallen from grace with their traditional electorates. This project centers how three major European conservative parties, the French Gaullists, British Conservatives, and German CDU/CSU, have experienced differing degrees of electoral resilience and adapted to the major sociological and economic changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries with secularization, liberalization, the rise of the EU, and new movements related to women's and LGBTQ+ equality.

I earned my BA (with highest honors) in Government, French, and Plan II Honors at the University of Texas at Austin in May 2022. While at UT, I received the William Jennings Bryan Prize for best undergraduate thesis in Government. At Berkeley, I am proud to help organize our department's Comparative Politics Colloquium and serve as co-president of our Political Science Graduate Students' Association (PSGSA) for 2025.

I grew up in Lucas, Texas which is (sort of) near Dallas and fell in love with European politics as an avid French learner from my freshman year of high school. Outside of academia, I enjoy singing, cooking Southern dishes, and most things pop culture.

Please feel free to email me about research or anything I've mentioned here at grant_durow@berkeley.edu! I am also more than happy to respond to questions from prospective PhD students in political science, especially LGBTQIA+ and first-gen applicants, regarding the application process and graduate school more generally.

Education

MA, Political Science | The University of California, Berkeley

BA (with highest honors), Government, French, and Plan II Honors | The University of Texas at Austin

Experience

Project manager and Clark Scholar | The Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies

Research intern | The Comparative Constitutions Project

English teaching assistant | The Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF)