Amanda D. Clark
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About Amanda
Dr. Clark’s research focuses on election administration, citizen engagement/democracy, and governance. Her work includes examining the public service motivations of poll workers, the role public administration scholars can play in bolstering democracy and centering the work of election officials in pedagogy, and strategies for election workers dealing with emotional labor in their positions. She is the Director of the Initiative for Civic Leadership at UT Dallas; the initiative is an undergraduate program in which students intern locally with government or nonprofit agencies while learning about civic engagement.
Contributions
In the News
Publications
Examines the evolution of Election Integrity Units in Florida and Ohio, exposing their origins, funding sources, and operational strategies. Highlights how these units, purportedly created to safeguard election integrity, have instead become instruments for voter suppression, disproportionately targeting communities of color and echoing historical patterns of discrimination.
Investigates the impact of emotional labor on election workers in this atmosphere. Uncovers the presence and nuances of emotional labor in election administration and raises questions about what this means for the future of election administration.
Words and symbols shape how the public understands, responds to, and navigates our new normal amid the COVID-19 pandemic; this framing shapes our collective understanding of who or what is valued. Austerity politics at all levels of government has not only helped to create a patchwork system of crisis response, but also explains the variation in framing of the pandemic response as tradeoffs among competing values (e.g., equity versus economy; us versus other; health versus business).
Notes the Flint Water Crisis captured the attention of the world in January 2016 when both the state and federal governments declared a public health emergency in Flint, MI. Finds that grassroots organizations and high-capacity nonprofits differed in their responses to the crisis due to their place in the power hierarchy and framed their responses by using different causal stories.
Notes the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an intentionally intersectional movement, challenges one to consider the ways in which BLM is reimagining the lines of Black activism and the Black Liberation Movement. Notes the founders of BLM are intentionally inclusive of all Black lives no matter their gender, criminal status, immigration status, age or sexual orientation.