Sarah Gustafson is a Junior Fellow at the Gibbons Institute and an Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. She earned a PhD from Harvard University in Government (Political Theory) where she wrote her dissertation on the political thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, under the supervision of Harvey C. Mansfield, Michael Sandel, and Ryan Patrick Hanley. Her interests include the history of liberalism, ancient political philosophy, American political thought, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and film and political thought.

She graduated from Davidson College, where she studied French history, and received her MA in the History of Political Thought from Queen Mary University of London/University College London. Her MA thesis there received the University of London Quentin Skinner Prize in the History of Political Thought.