Pinderhughes is full professor in the Departments of africana studies and political science at the University of Notre Dame. Before Notre Dame, she taught at Dartmouth College, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She holds a B.A. from Albertus Magnus College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Her teaching focuses on racial and ethnic politics in the U.S., Voting Rights policy and American urban politics. Pinderhughes’s research addresses issues of inequality with a focus on racial and ethnic politics and public policy, explores the creation of American civil society institutions in the twentieth century, and analyzes their influence on the formation of voting rights policy. Her publications include her book, Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory. Pinderhughes also examines the intersection of race and gender in American electoral representation, in a current study, the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project.