Dear RSF: 

Please join us next Wednesday, April 17th at 11 in the library and on Zoom for Visiting Scholar Gabriele Magni’s presentation, “Rainbow waves: LGBTQ+ candidates and the electability curse.” 

Magni is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University, Director of the Global Policy Institute and Founding Director of the LBGTQ+ Politics Research Institute. He holds a PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an MA in International Relations from the University of Bologna (Italy) and a BA in Political Science and History from the University of Milan (Italy). Among his many honors, Magni was named to the Out in National Security and New America’s Out Leadership List in 2022 and received Loyola Marymount’s BLCA Fellowship Award in Spring 2021. His research examines issues of diversity and representation in advanced democracies. His work focuses on the causes and consequence of LGBTQ+ political representation, as well as analyzing immigration attitudes and voting behavior. Magni’s  research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies, among other outlets. He has also written for The Washington Post, Politico and The New Republic, and he has provided commentary to The New York Times, The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, TIME, Al Jazeera, Associated Press, and Reuters, among others. 

At RSF, Magni is examining the experiences of LGBTQ political candidates. He is drawing on survey data, an original dataset of political candidates and district characteristics, archival materials covering political campaigns, and interviews with LGBTQ candidates and their staff to explore their decisions to run for office, the role that sexual orientation and gender identity play during their campaigns, the barriers they face, and election results.