I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In January 2026, I will join the University of Notre Dame as an Associate Professor of Global Affairs. I study public opinion and democratic governance with a focus on managing immigration, ethnic tensions, and other demographic issues in high-income countries. I specialize in computational and experimental methods, drawing on diverse data sources from surveys to historical records. My book In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular (Columbia University Press, 2025) examines under what conditions most people would accept freer immigration despite their biases.

My work has been published in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. It has been recognized by leading grants and awards, including from the Russell Sage Foundation, American Political Science Association, and Department of Defense Army Research Office. I have also written for The Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, and been featured in The New York Times, Economist, Atlantic, and Financial Times, as well as by think tanks such as the Bipartisan Policy Center, Center for Global Development, and Niskanen Center.

Currently, I am the author of the Popular by Design newsletter and a contributor at Good Authority. Prior to my appointment at UNC Charlotte, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. I received my joint Ph.D. in Politics and Social Policy from Princeton University. I can be reached at akustov [at] nd [dot] edu. You can find my CV here.

Select Articles

Kustov, Alexander and Michelangelo Landgrave. 2025. Immigration is Difficult?! Informing Voters About Immigration Policy Fosters Pro-immigration Views. Journal of Experimental Political Science.

Kustov, Alexander. 2024. Beyond Changing Minds: Raising the Issue Importance of Expanding Legal Immigration. Perspectives on Politics.

Kustov, Alexander. 2023. Do Anti-immigration Voters Care More? Documenting the Issue Importance Asymmetry of Immigration Attitudes. British Journal of Political Science. 53 (2): 796-805.

Kustov, Alexander, Dillon Laaker, and Cassidy Reller. 2021. The Stability of Immigration Attitudes: Evidence and Implications. Journal of Politics. 83 (4): 1478-1494.