John Gastil (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Communication Arts and Sciences and Political Science at Penn State University, where he also serves as Senior Scholar at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. The National Science Foundation has supported numerous large-scale research programs for which he has served as a principal investigator, including work that led to the publication of Hope for Democracy (2020), The Jury and Democracy (2010), and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Gastil has worked on campaigns for federal, state, and local office in California and New Mexico. He has also written two novels, published in 2020 by Cosmic Egg Books (UK).