Kristin’s research adopts a political psychology framework to explore mass political behavior, particularly as it relates to the urban-rural divide and health-related misinformation and attitudes. Her work has been funded by the NSF and she has published in academic journals such as Political Behavior, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Geography, Political Science Research and Methods, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Social Science & Medicine, among others.

Her work has also won several awards and has appeared in various media outlets, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, FiveThirtyEight, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, Time, US News and World Report, and more. Before coming to the University of South Carolina, Kristin was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, and at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. She completed her PhD in Political Science with a minor in political psychology at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities in 2021.