Meet 2026 BRIDGS Emergent Scholar Armin Sauermann! 👋
Armin Sauermann is a PhD student in Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis whose research focuses on gun culture, political identity, and the citizen-state relationship. His dissertation explores what gun ownership among liberal Americans reveals about how citizens understand their relationship to state power and protection.
As a Fellow, Armin workshopped a paper showing that embeddedness in gun-owning social networks is the strongest predictor of gun ownership, while perceived threat plays a surprisingly minor role.
"BRIDGS was the first time I was in a room full of people who found this work as exciting as I do, and that kind of validation is an enormous motivational boost."