Wayde Z. C. Marsh

Wayde Z. C. Marsh is an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Prior to joining Tennessee in 2023, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 2022. His research focuses on how Americans construct and interpret their political identities through racial-ethnic and religious lenses and how this impacts political participation, attitude formation, and the ways voters assess candidates. Additionally, he investigates the psychological processes involved in political decision-making in increasingly uncertain and polarized environments, especially in the wake of traumatic experiences. Currently, his research examines the political consequences of different types of mass public and private traumatic events, the perceptions and effects of corporate engagement in polarized policy disputes, and the dynamics of group consciousness among Latino and white Americans.

Marsh’s project, “An Epidemic of Terror: Polarization, Attacks on Places of Worship, and Democratic Equality,” investigates how attacks on Black churches from 1950 to 2025 reveal racial and religious dimensions of contemporary polarization and pathways to depolarize. Combining qualitative interviews, historical analysis, electoral and geographic data, and original experimental survey data, he will examine the emotional responses that underpin post-traumatic stress and growth in political behavior, and the role of political and religious elites in shaping how these responses feed or counteract patterns of polarization.

May 2026