Research Interests: Political organizations; polarization; civic engagement and political participation; mobilization tactics and strategy; collective identity; political culture; internet and social media; conservative politics; computational text analysis; qualitative methods

Catharina O'Donnell is a PhD student in sociology. Her research draws on the sociology of politics, culture, and organizations. She is broadly interested in how political organizations and groups develop their tactics and ideology, especially in relation to competing actors.

In one line of recent work, Cat found that the largest national political organizations in the US mobilize their membership bases very differently on the right and left. This project received the 2023 Best Student Paper Award at the Canadian Sociological Association. In another project, Cat examines how collective identity is built in clandestine online political communities, using the case of incels. The first paper from this line of research is published in the British Journal of Sociology. Other ongoing projects with co-authors include a study of organizational responses to mass protest in 2020, a study of internal mobilization tactics by union members over the last 50 years, and an analysis of the movement for Trump during and after his presidential term.

Cat is now conducting comparative research on conservative mobilization in the US and Canada.

Previous Degrees:
BA, Honors Political Science and Honors Sociology, McGill University 2020 (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)