She studies voter mobilization and engagement in the United States, particularly among minority communities, as well as public opinion and political communication.
[1][2] She then attended graduate school at Yale University, earning an MA in 1991, an MPhil in 1994, and a PhD in 1994, all in political science.
Her first book, written with Lisa García Bedolla in 2012, was called Mobilizing inclusion: Transforming the electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns.
[7] Michelson was also an author of two books that were published in 2017: A Matter of Discretion: The Politics of Catholic Priests in the United States and Ireland (with Brian R. Calfano and Elizabeth A. Oldmixon), which employs surveys and a field experiment to test how Roman Catholic clergy choose political acts to participate in,[8] and Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights (with Brian F. Harrison), which uses randomized experimentation to test a new theory about the dramatic shift in public opinion regarding LGBT rights in the United States over the preceding 3 decades.
[20] In May 2020, it was announced that Michelson had been named the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Menlo College, with a term beginning in July 2020.