Derek Epp is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty in 2017 from Dartmouth College where he was a postdoc within the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center. In May 2015, he received his Ph.D. in American Politics with a minor in Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His research agenda focuses on policy change, asking why some policies persist – remaining the status quo for decades – while others undergo frequent adjustments. In particular, he is interested in measuring the capacity of institutions to attend to political information and then tracking the allocation of that attention across issues: what issues receive attention, for how long, and to what effect. He also studies criminal justice, with a particular focus on racial patterns in police traffic stops.