Ph.D in political science from Texas A&M University
B.S.J. in journalism from Northwestern University

 Books:

Lobbyists at Work. 2013. APress/Springer.

            Featured on CSPAN’s BookTV May 13, 2013. 58 minutes. www.booktv.org/Watch/14611/Lobbyists+at+Work.aspx  

Meeting at Grand Central: Understanding the Social and Evolutionary Roots of Cooperation. 2013. Princeton University Press. With Lee Cronk.

Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why.  2009. Chicago University Press. With Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, and David C. Kimball.

            Winner of the Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political

            Organizations and Parties section, American Political Science Association.

Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and Political Science. 1998. Princeton University Press,. With Frank R. Baumgartner.

Selected Recent Journal Articles and Chapters in Books:

“Controverting Expectations: How Lobbying Affects Public Policy.” Election Law Journal (forthcoming, 2014). With Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, and David C. Kimball.

“Lessons from the ‘Lobbying and Policy Change’ Project.”  In Interview Research in Political Science, Layna Mosley, ed. Cornell University Press, 2013.

“Studying Organizational Advocacy and Influence: Reexamining Interest Group Research.” Annual Review of Political Science 15 (2012): 379-99. With Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, and David C. Kimball.

Professor Leech's primary research interests involve the roles of interest groups, social movements, and the mass media in the public policy process. Her work is informed by theories of collective action, agenda building, and human cooperation and coordination.

Research design and better methods of data collection are central to her work, and she is a much-cited expert on interview techniques in the social sciences.

She currently is completing a book on interest group lobbying strategies that relies on paired surveys of interest group lobbyists from 1996 and 2012.

At Rutgers, Professor Leech teaches classes on interest groups, mass media and politics, citizen activism, and research methods