She is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.
[3] She subsequently moved to the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics at Columbia University becoming a scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project there.
[4] In 2016, Hemmer published the book Messengers of the Right: Conservative media and the transformation of American politics,[5] which arose from her PhD dissertation.
[8] In particular, conservative media and conservative politicians did not always have a close relationship in America, and Messengers of the right is concerned with the development of that relationship to the point that media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity can often be understood as acting collaboratively with politicians like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump.
[11] Hemmer's research on conservative media and its role in electoral politics has been reviewed or cited in news outlets like NPR,[12] Vox,[13] Politico,[14] and The Washington Times.
Since 2015, Hemmer has hosted the weekly podcast Past Present with the historians Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J.