Justin Gest is a Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

He is the author of six books, primarily on the politics of immigration and demographic change—all from Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press.

His research has been published in journals including the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Comparative Political Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Global Governance, Global Policy, International Migration Review, Migration Studies, Polity, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the editor of Silent Citizenship: The Politics of Marginality in Unequal Democracies (Routledge, 2016), and special issues of Citizenship Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

He has also provided commentary, analysis, or reporting to a number of broadcast networks, including ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, and NPR, and news publications including The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, POLITICO, Reuters, The Times, Vox, and The Washington Post.

From 2010 to 2014, Professor Gest was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Harvard University’s Departments of Government and Sociology. In 2014 and 2020, Professor Gest received Harvard University’s Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize and George Mason University’s Teaching Excellence Award, respectively each university’s highest award for faculty teaching. In 2013, he received the Star Family Prize for Student Advising, Harvard’s highest award for student advising. From 2007 to 2010, he co-founded and served as the co-director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

He is a product of Los Angeles Unified School District’s University High School in West Los Angeles, where he grew up. He later earned his bachelor’s degree in Government at Harvard University and his PhD in Government from the LSE.