Virginia H. Gray

Virginia Gray is the Robert Watson Winston Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research and teaching experience includes public policy, interest groups, and state politics.

Gray has co-led numerous research projects on state interest groups with Professor David Lowery; their publications include The Population Ecology of Interest Representation: Lobbying Communities in the American States and most recently Interest Groups and Health Care Reform across the United States. They have published articles in a range of journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Social Science Quarterly, International Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Political Research Quarterly. Their research has been funded by a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation and a three-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on health policy.

Gray is the coeditor of a leading textbook on state government, Politics in the American States, now in its tenth edition. She taught at the University of Minnesota for over 25 years and has been a visiting professor at universities in Canada, Norway, and the People’s Republic of China. Gray was educated at Hendrix College (B.A. with honors) and Washington University in St. Louis (M.A., Ph.D.).