Danny Cowser

Daniel Cowser is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His research explores how governments respond to public demands, with a particular focus on refugee policy, international cooperation, and local government accountability. He uses a mix of experimental, qualitative, and computational methods to investigate how citizens influence institutions—and how institutions, in turn, shape citizen behavior.

Daniel has conducted fieldwork in the United States and West Africa, collaborated with NGOs and government partners in Europe, and designed behavioral experiments to evaluate political communication and responsiveness. His current projects examine the downstream effects of unresponsiveness on civic trust, the role of international obligations in shaping local government behavior, and how psychology’s contact theory can be used to reduce government discrimination.

In addition to his research, Daniel teaches undergraduate courses on applied research methods, statistics, and programming. He is committed to making social science accessible, rigorous, and practically useful, and enjoys mentoring students through developing rigrous research studying questions they are passionate about.