As an Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara, Heather Stoll focuses on comparative politics, the politicization of social conflict, and political methodology, particularly in advanced industrial democracies such as Western Europe, the United States, and Israel.

Her 2008 Hellman Fellowship enabled her to spend two months in Israel interviewing past and current politicians from recent immigrant backgrounds; observing the work of advocacy groups working on behalf of immigrant communities; and gathering historical data from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that only existed in hard copy. This field work informed the development of her 2013 book published by Cambridge University Press–one of the top academic presses in political science. It also supported an undergraduate research assistant who has since gone on to earn a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford and to hold prominent positions in both academia and the private sector.