Biography

Dr. Lorrie Frasure is the inaugural Ralph J. Bunche Endowed Chair and a Professor of Political Science and African American Studies. She is the Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. Frasure also serves as the Faculty Director for the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. She joined the faculty of UCLA in 2007 and became the first woman of color and the first Black female to earn tenure and to become full professor in the Political Science department. From 2019-2022 she served as Vice Chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. Frasure also served as the Acting Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA from 2019-2020.

Her research expertise includes racial/ethnic political behavior, African American politics, women and politics, immigrant political incorporation, and state and local politics. Her book, Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs (Cambridge University Press) is the 2016 winner of two national book awards by the American Political Science Association (APSA), including the Best Book about Race Relations in the United States from the Race, Ethnicity and Politics (REP) Section, and the Dennis Judd Best Book Award in Urban and Local Politics. She is the co-author of the textbook, Uneven Roads: An Introduction to U.S. Racial and Ethnic Politics (2024 CQ Press; 3rd Edition).

Frasure is also the co-Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), the first cooperative, multiracial/ethnic, multilingual, post-Presidential election online survey in the U.S. With over $2 million in major funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the CMPS and the CMPS Scholars Research Network includes a consortium of nearly 250 scholars, across 100 universities/colleges. The CMPS is considered one of the most impactful survey-based data projects in the social sciences.  The 2020 CMPS was offered in English, Spanish, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Haitian Creole. The survey dataset includes nearly 15,000 Black, White, Latino and Asian respondents as well as oversamples of nearly 5,000 respondents from hard-to-reach populations including, Afro-Latinos, Black immigrants, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Muslims and people who identify as LGBTQ. The 2020 CMPS also include a sample of 16- and 17-year-old youth. Through its inclusive model of resource-sharing, workshops, research and publication opportunities, the CMPS has changed the way data is collected and shared between an interdisciplinary group of researchers, and collaboratively builds a diverse and dynamic academic pipeline of scholars in the social sciences and related fields.

She is the recipient of several local and national awards including the Ford Foundation Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards from the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the Clarence Stone Young Scholars Award of the American Political Science Association’s Urban Politics Section.  In 2018, she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, with a special “Distinction in Teaching at the Graduate Level.” She is the first woman and the first person of color in the history of the Political Science Department to have earned UCLA’s highest campus-wide teaching recognition (since developed in 1961).

Frasure was featured in the PBS Newshour “Rethinking College” segment highlighting her teaching and mentorship with First Generation College Students at UCLA. A first-generation college graduate, Frasure was featured in the UCLA First-Generation Faculty Initiative, to encourage and inspire first-generation college students. She was awarded the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy–Rising Star Alumni Award, for “extraordinary work addressing racial and ethnic politics in America.”

Frasure received her B.A. from the University of Illinois-Urbana, a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland-College Park. Prior to joining the faculty of UCLA, she was a Postdoctoral Associate and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She was born and raised on Chicago’s Southside.

Education

University of Maryland-College Park, Department of Government and Politics Ph.D. in Government and Politics, December 2005 (American Politics and Urban Political Economy) University of Maryland-College Park, Department of Government and Politics M.A. in Government and Politics, 2003 University of Chicago, Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies M.P.P, 2001 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Political Science B.A. in Political Science, High Distinction, 1999