Biography

Melinda Ritchie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State University. Prior to joining the faculty at OSU, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. She was previously a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics for the 2019-2020 academic year and a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University in 2015-2016.  

Her Ph.D. is from the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and she received a B.A. in Government from Smith College in 2006. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked in Washington, DC as a legislative assistant for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  

Her research interests include American political institutions, U.S. Congress, bureaucratic politics, and the impact of separation of powers on policymaking. Her current research is funded by an NSF CAREER award, CAREER: Preserving Democratic Governance, Representation, and Accountability Within an Evolving Policymaking Environment (2024-2029). Her research examines how members of Congress engage with federal agencies on policy issues. This work appears in her book, Backdoor Lawmaking (Oxford University Press), winner of the Alan Rosenthal Prize and the Louis Brownlow Book Award.  Her other research is published in Political Behavior, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the American Journal of Political Science.