Bartels has held the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University since 2011. His scholarship and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and political representation. His books include Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd ed.) and Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher Achen). He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and of occasional pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets. Bartels is a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and a past vice president of the American Political Science Association. He has received APSA’s Warren E. Miller Prize and Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize for Career Achievement in Research. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.