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Danielle Pullan

@dmpullan.bsky.social

1.8K followers 1.8K following 86 posts

Assistant professor of political science researching abortion policy and gender representation | she/her 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸🇮🇹 | Alum of MPIfG, U Cologne, American U

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Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · May 9

I've got a new job! My full thoughts are too long for one post, so see the attached images (with text in the descriptions) for my reflections on the academic job market this year, the choice to jump from Europe to the US, and what's next for me! And of course, there are plots in the reply post ;)

Finally with all of the t's crossed and i's dotted, I'm delighted to share more about my new job! But I also want to put this success in the context of the overall process that it took to get here. It's hard to get a job these days in many fields, but the field I know best is academia. It was a complicated choice to leave Europe for the next step, but a huge part of that choice was the knowledge that there are just so few long-term jobs available in academia. I made the bet that in the US, I could play the numbers game long enough that eventually, I would find a job that was a good fit. You only need one, after all, but with more application possibilities, I staked my hopes on the US instead of Europe.

In the end, I applied to 177 jobs. Because I am an incurable nerd, I've made plots. Mostly I was aiming for tenure track jobs, because that was my other big hope in the US: to avoid 4, or 6, or 8, or more years of temporary, precarious positions that seem to be inevitable for European postdocs. The market is just really different, and it was a learning curve to remember how to write like an American again, but also to learn the unwritten rules of a system that I haven't been a part of for the last 9 years. A lot of these jobs just never replied. One place that actually interviewed me months ago finally got around to rejecting me literally yesterday. But this also meant that there were days where, on top of submitting more and more applications and doing my current job and flying back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to make life work for my family, I was also getting several rejections a day.

The biggest lesson I've learned about the academic job market is that, while in some ways, every job is extremely specific and hiring for a very narrow set of qualifications, in other ways, it is entirely impersonal. Rejections are not rejections of who you are as a person, and they don't mean that your work is bad or unimportant. The more stable the position, the more time and resources the university is investing in choosing a good long term candidate. It's hard to fire someone from the tenure track, and so they want to make sure they're making a good choice. What constitutes a "good choice" depends on who is on the committee, who has recently retired or left the university, what students are demanding, what the administration is demanding, and where they imagine the discipline / the department going in the future. It was always a matter of time and sheer numbers before my CV would end up in front of the right people in the right place at the right time for us all to fit together.

Starting in August, I will be an assistant professor of political science on the tenure track at Georgia College, a small liberal arts college in the public University System of Georgia south of Atlanta. In the coming weeks, Marco and I are figuring out how to wrap up our life in Germany -- moving out, ending my employment at the University of Cologne, and seeing and celebrating with as many friends as we can. Life in Georgia is going to be really different, but we feel really hopeful about it. I don't know that we'll stay in Georgia forever -- nothing is ever promised -- but it's possible that we could, and that's huge. At the same time, when I say "stay," I don't mean that I won't ever travel -- in fact, I was very clear with my future colleagues that I intend to keep working with my broad international network of colleagues and friends. I will be back. But I will also have a stable home base in a beautiful area that brings so many of the things we're looking to have more of in our lives. This is really exciting, y'all!

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · 19h

Calling all comparative legislative scholars! We’ve got a new dataset with committee memberships from 14 countries over 35 years, spanning almost 15,000 MPs in 260 parties! Grateful for my excellent coauthors! #polisky #gendersky

Jens Wäckerle @jwaeckerle.bsky.social · 19h

New data for legislative scholars! Committee Membership Dataset with @bcastanho.bsky.social, @dmpullan.bsky.social and Firuze Taner:

Committee assignments for all MPs (Wikidata IDs!) in 14 countries
Harmonized roles/policy areas

Data: doi.org/10.7802/2940
Working paper: tinyurl.com/vf54r78p

⬇️

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 29

If this topic interests you, check out the rest of the articles in the special issue! siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...

Vol 11, No 1 (2025)

siba-ese.unisalento.it

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 29

...depending on the region in which they live. You can read the whole article here: siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...
reprosky gendersky polisky 4/

“In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it”. The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies | Gannon | Interdisciplinary Political Studies

“In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it”. The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies

siba-ese.unisalento.it

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 29

...conscientious objection within one hospital or hospital system, the regions are able to provide different levels of abortion access. In turn, doctors who provide abortions have much more or less positive experiences in their jobs, and patients have an easier or harder time accessing care... 3/

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 29

We quickly realized that what was standard procedure in one place was not necessarily the case in another region, and we dug deeper to determine why regions were implementing the same law in different ways. In the end, we see that due to local administrative choices and cultural norms of... 2/

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 29

My and @paytongannon.bsky.social 's latest publication on abortion access in Italy came out last week as part of the special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies! This article grew out of our conversations about the interviews we were each conducting in different regions of Italy. 1/

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

Payton Gannon @paytongannon.bsky.social · Jul 23

I am especially excited for the publication of @dmpullan.bsky.social's and my article “'In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it.' The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies."
Read it here: tinyurl.com/3fu5khpu

“In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it”. The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies | Gannon | Interdisciplinary Political Studies

“In Italy, we have a saying: make the law and you will find a way to cheat it”. The Regionalized Implementation of Italian Abortion Policies

siba-ese.unisalento.it

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

Payton Gannon @paytongannon.bsky.social · Jul 23

A special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies on reproductive rights in developed democracies has been published. It has been a pleasure to work with all the authors and my co-editors @dmpullan.bsky.social and @gmripamonti.bsky.social

Read it here: siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/idps

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 23

Check out the full lineup -- all of these articles are available for free, because IdPS publishes open access through the Università del Salento press!
siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/id...

Vol 11, No 1 (2025)

siba-ese.unisalento.it

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 23

We have had the pleasure of working with sharp scholars & capable editors as we guest edited this issue over the last year. Spanning geographies, levels of analysis, and methods, this issue asks: why are some countries taking steps to liberalize abortion rights, while others are rolling them back?

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jul 23

So happy to see this special issue of Interdisciplinary Political Studies on Steps Forward and Backward on Abortion Rights in Advanced Democracies published today, coedited with @gmripamonti.bsky.social and @paytongannon.bsky.social! gendersky reprosky polisky

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

The Loop @ecprtheloop.bsky.social · Jun 16

🎉 Congratulations to @paytongannon.bsky.social and @dmpullan.bsky.social who made the Loop Best Blog 2024 shortlist for their article 'Emergency room abortions in the US: doctors’ objections trump patients’ lives'. #RoeVWade
➡️ ow.ly/2k5F50W3jR9

Emergency room abortions in the US: doctors’ objections trump patients’ lives

It is now two years since the fall of Roe v. Wade. How has this affected healthcare for pregnant Americans? Payton Gannon and Danielle Pullan explain the most recent Supreme Court cases, and contextua...

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Jun 13

Honored to have been considered for this prize for my work with @paytongannon.bsky.social explaining US court decisions on abortion post-Dobbs! Highly recommend publishing quick, contemporary pieces with @ecprtheloop.bsky.social — always a great experience and great editorial team!

The Loop @ecprtheloop.bsky.social · Jun 13

🏆 Last week we awarded our annual £500 prize for the best Loop blog piece in the previous calendar year, as judged by an independent jury.
📝 Here, Managing Editor Kate Hawkins presents the longlisted pieces — and reveals the very special winner.
➡️ ow.ly/mii350W8Q0e

2024 Best Blog winner — revealed

In 2022, The Loop inaugurated a Best Blog prize to reward a contribution of exceptional value. We have now conferred our third £500 prize on the author of a piece judged by our independent jury to be ...

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

Nikolina Klatt @klatt.bsky.social · May 30

I love when my academic family grows! Attending the very first Politics and Gender Conference at Rutgers University was one of those moments. I met many familiar faces and made new exciting connections.

@politicsgenderj.bsky.social
@ecprgender.bsky.social
@dmpullan.bsky.social

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · May 28

Excited to learn and widen my network at the Politics and Gender conference at Rutgers today and tomorrow! Are my ECPG people here? Please say hi! polisky gendersky

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · May 9

Who doesn't love plots!

Plot of US job applications by type of job, showing tenure track, temporary faculty, postdoc, non-TT, and administrative jobs applied to from August 2024 - April 2025

Plot of US job applications and rejections from August 2024 - April 2025. The peak number of rejections is about half the number of applications.

Plot of how many days it took for my applications to be rejected, with the max being 225!

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · May 9

I've got a new job! My full thoughts are too long for one post, so see the attached images (with text in the descriptions) for my reflections on the academic job market this year, the choice to jump from Europe to the US, and what's next for me! And of course, there are plots in the reply post ;)

Finally with all of the t's crossed and i's dotted, I'm delighted to share more about my new job! But I also want to put this success in the context of the overall process that it took to get here. It's hard to get a job these days in many fields, but the field I know best is academia. It was a complicated choice to leave Europe for the next step, but a huge part of that choice was the knowledge that there are just so few long-term jobs available in academia. I made the bet that in the US, I could play the numbers game long enough that eventually, I would find a job that was a good fit. You only need one, after all, but with more application possibilities, I staked my hopes on the US instead of Europe.

In the end, I applied to 177 jobs. Because I am an incurable nerd, I've made plots. Mostly I was aiming for tenure track jobs, because that was my other big hope in the US: to avoid 4, or 6, or 8, or more years of temporary, precarious positions that seem to be inevitable for European postdocs. The market is just really different, and it was a learning curve to remember how to write like an American again, but also to learn the unwritten rules of a system that I haven't been a part of for the last 9 years. A lot of these jobs just never replied. One place that actually interviewed me months ago finally got around to rejecting me literally yesterday. But this also meant that there were days where, on top of submitting more and more applications and doing my current job and flying back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to make life work for my family, I was also getting several rejections a day.

The biggest lesson I've learned about the academic job market is that, while in some ways, every job is extremely specific and hiring for a very narrow set of qualifications, in other ways, it is entirely impersonal. Rejections are not rejections of who you are as a person, and they don't mean that your work is bad or unimportant. The more stable the position, the more time and resources the university is investing in choosing a good long term candidate. It's hard to fire someone from the tenure track, and so they want to make sure they're making a good choice. What constitutes a "good choice" depends on who is on the committee, who has recently retired or left the university, what students are demanding, what the administration is demanding, and where they imagine the discipline / the department going in the future. It was always a matter of time and sheer numbers before my CV would end up in front of the right people in the right place at the right time for us all to fit together.

Starting in August, I will be an assistant professor of political science on the tenure track at Georgia College, a small liberal arts college in the public University System of Georgia south of Atlanta. In the coming weeks, Marco and I are figuring out how to wrap up our life in Germany -- moving out, ending my employment at the University of Cologne, and seeing and celebrating with as many friends as we can. Life in Georgia is going to be really different, but we feel really hopeful about it. I don't know that we'll stay in Georgia forever -- nothing is ever promised -- but it's possible that we could, and that's huge. At the same time, when I say "stay," I don't mean that I won't ever travel -- in fact, I was very clear with my future colleagues that I intend to keep working with my broad international network of colleagues and friends. I will be back. But I will also have a stable home base in a beautiful area that brings so many of the things we're looking to have more of in our lives. This is really exciting, y'all!

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

European Journal of Politics and Gender @ejpgjournal.bsky.social · May 8

🚨NEW ARTICLE ALERT🚨

"Our findings highlight how court rulings impact opposition strategies and shed more light on the post-reform stage as a crucial phase in determining the fate of liberalizing reforms" 🇺🇸 🇲🇽

@giuliamariani.bsky.social @camreu.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1332/2515...
GenderSky

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Apr 17

Finally with a proper citation!

Interested in how women MPs navigate parliamentary careers and adapt their behavior? Stay tuned for our followup project, where we look at how much power and prestige they attain as compared to men! #polisky #gendersky @jwaeckerle.bsky.social @bcastanho.bsky.social

Bruno Castanho Silva @bcastanho.bsky.social · Apr 16

Now out in an issue with proper page numbers🎉

Women in parliament, particularly in left parties, adapt their speaking style over the years to fit the male-dominated hierarchies of parties and parliaments

With the best coauthors one could ask for @dmpullan.bsky.social @jwaeckerle.bsky.social

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library

Women in male-dominated organizations often must adopt more stereotypical masculine traits to advance within those hierarchies. While politics, historically male-dominated, should induce women to ble...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Apr 2

Hey #polisky, who's in Chicago for #MPSA this week? Start off the conference on a high note with our panel "Abortion Policy & Democracy" at 8am Thursday! Looking forward to great conversation w @annacrawford.bsky.social, @klatt.bsky.social, @paytongannon.bsky.social, & others! tinyurl.com/25uz25gw

Screenshot from the link included in this post detailing the presentations in this panel

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Mar 31

I don’t address the “harms”’of abortion because the peer reviewed evidence of a years-long study finds that abortion is not harmful. I’ve read the source material and made my own interpretations. You clearly have your own opinion here. Have a nice day!

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Mar 31

Thanks for your question. You can read more about the harms of gestational limits at the De Zordo citation you mention, and you can read all about the harms of being denied an abortion in The Turnaway Study — worse health for mothers and children, worse economic status, bad relationships, etc!

Danielle Pullan @dmpullan.bsky.social · Mar 31

Abortion access works in political-geographic systems: when there is regional regulation, you’ll end up with some sanctuaries, some islands, and some deserts of access — in the US, in Italy, and beyond. So glad my oldest paper with @paytongannon.bsky.social has finally made it online!

Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung (MPIfG) @mpifg.bsky.social · Mar 31

Sanctuaries, Islands, and Deserts: @paytongannon.bsky.social and @dmpullan.bsky.social propose a typology of regionalized abortion policy. Comparing the US and Italy, they analyze the impact of regional abortion access on abortion providers and patients.

New MPIfG Discussion Paper: s.gwdg.de/p7Ps65

Title page: Sanctuaries, Islands and Deserts. A typology of regionalized abortion policy. Payton Gannon and Danielle Pullan

Abstract

This paper elaborates a typology of regionalized abortion policy based on a comparative case study of Italy and the United States. Italy originally legalized abortion in 1978 and has seen little effort to modify the law since. Contrastingly, the United States’ abortion landscape has been in near constant flux since 1974, when, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion. This became even more unstable in 2022 when the Supreme Court overruled Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and held there is no constitutional right to abortion.

Despite their differences in national abortion policy, both Italy and the US have regionalized the implementation of their abortion policies. Italy’s law is national, but implementation is interpreted differently at the regional level. Since Dobbs, US states have proposed and passed many laws about abortion, creating even greater regional variation than before.

We propose a typology of regionalized abortion access: Sanctuaries where abortion is most protected and available; Islands with liberal policies that are surrounded by more restrictive territories; and Deserts with minimal abortion access. Through qualitative analysis of policies, political activities, and firsthand accounts by abortion providers and advocates working in places of each type, we then highlight the long-term implications of each of these components of the typology, analyzing the ways that they impact abortion providers and patients.

Keywords: abortion, health policy, human rights, policy implementation, regionalization

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Mar 20

Worse than Hungary or Poland or Turkey. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/w...

Reposted by Danielle Pullan

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · Mar 19

if you think that "no one is protesting this time" it says less about what's happening in the world and more about your media consumption habits and how the news media is lying to you.

Erica Chenoweth @chenoweth.bsky.social · Mar 19

Chart of cumulative protests reported from Jan 22 - Feb 28, 2017 vs 2025:

Chart showing double the number of protests in 2025 than occurred during the same time period in 2017.