Professor Thurston’s research is on American political development, political economy, and public policy, with a particular interest in how politics and public policy shape market inequalities along the lines of race and gender. She is the author of At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination and the American State (Cambridge University Press, 2018), her research has been published in Studies in American Political Development; Politics, Groups, and Identities; and the Journal of Public Policy, and commentaries have appeared in The Daily Beast, Ms., and The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), among others.
Thurston is currently working on two projects related to the politics of credit, debt, and asset inequality in the U.S. The first of these (joint with Emily Zackin) examines the rise and fall of a protective debt relief regime in the United States. The second examines the political economy asset and wealth inequality following key civil rights reforms in the 1960s and 1970s.
Thurston received her B.A. in economics and political science from Johns Hopkins University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019-2020, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.