James N. Druckman is the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research focuses on political preference formation and communication. His work examines how citizens make political, economic, and social decisions in various contexts (e.g., settings with multiple competing messages, online information, deliberation). He also researches the relationship between citizens' preferences and public policy and the polarization of American society.

Druckman has published more than 150 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited the books Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science, Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation, Advances in Experimental Political Science, and Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments. He has served as editor of the journals Political Psychology and Public Opinion Quarterly as well as the University of Chicago Press's series in American Politics. He currently is the co-Principal Investigator of Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), the editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Experimental Political Science, and a co-Principal Investigator of the COVID States Project. He also sits on numerous advisory boards, organizing committees, prize committees, and editorial boards.

Druckman has received grant support from such entities as the National Science Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Phi Beta Kappa. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His teaching/advising has been recognized with the Outstanding Award for Freshman Advising, multiple Faculty Mentoring Awards, and Outstanding Faculty citations by Northwestern's Associated Student Government.

Druckman obtained his BA from Northwestern, majoring in mathematical methods in the social sciences and political science. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.