Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. My research focuses on public and policy responses to immigration and ethnic diversity in high-income countries. I specialize in experimental and computational methods informed by a range of data sources, including original surveys and economic games, historical and geocoded records, political texts and computer simulations. My award-winning book project Borders of Compassion examines under what conditions most people accept open immigration policies.

My work has been published in, among many others, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and World Politics. It has been recognized by leading grants and awards, including from the American Political Science Association and the Russell Sage Foundation. I have also written for and been featured in popular outlets such as The Washington Post and think tanks such as the Center for Global Development. Prior to my appointment at UNCC, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Jackson Institute for 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] uncc [dot] edu. You can find my CV here.

Select Publications

Kustov, Alexander. 2022 (forthcoming). Do Anti-immigration Voters Care More? Documenting the Issue Importance Asymmetry of Immigration Attitudes. British Journal of Political Science.

Pardelli, Giuliana, and Alexander Kustov. 2022. When Coethnicity Fails. World Politics. 74 (2): 249-284.

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

Kustov, Alexander. 2021. Borders of Compassion: Immigration Preferences and Parochial Altruism. Comparative Political Studies. 54 (3-4): 445–481.

Kustov, Alexander, and Giuliana Pardelli. 2018. Ethnoracial Homogeneity and Public Outcomes: The (Non)effects of Diversity. American Political Science Review. 112 (4): 1096-1103.