The APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grants provide support for the advancement of scholars from historically racial and ethnic underrepresented groups and for research that examines political science phenomena affecting historically underserved communities and underrepresented groups and communities. In December 2021, APSA awarded ten projects for the APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grant for Early Career Scholars for a combined total award amount of $25,000. Read about the funded research projects at https://www.apsanet.org/DIVERSITY/Diversity-and-Inclusion-Resources/APSA-Diversity-Advancing-Research-Grants/APSA-Diversity-Advancing-Research-Grants-Early-Career-Scholars.
PROJECT TITLE: What is Promised, White is Owed: A New Generation Makes the Case for Reparations
ELIZABETH JORDIE DAVIES
Project collaborators: Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University; David Knight, University of Chicago
Elizabeth Jordie Davies is a postdoctoral scholar in the P3 Lab at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. In 2023, she will join the faculty at the University of California Irvine as an assistant professor of political science. Jordie received her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. Jordie’s research and writing interests include Black politics and political thought, US social movements, and Black feminism. Her research agenda focuses on the influence of social movements on political attitudes, activism, and political participation.
JENN M. JACKSON
Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a queer, androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an assistant professor at Syracuse University in the department of political science. Jackson’s research is in Black Politics with a focus on Black Feminist movements, racial threat, gender and sexuality, and political behavior. They are the author of the forthcoming book BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US (Penguin Random House, 2022). Jackson has written peer-reviewed articles at Public Culture, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Social Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. Jackson received their doctoral degree in political science at the University of Chicago in 2019.
DAVID J. KNIGHT
David J. Knight is a PhD candidate in the department of political science at the University of Chicago. His research sits at the intersection between mass incarceration, race and ethnicity, and social movements, with a focus on how imprisonment shapes Black political thought and action. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation.
PROJECT TITLE: Bridging Grassroots Movements and Legislation Advocacy through Asian American Feminist Praxis
NICOLE FILLER
Nicole Filler is an instructor in the ethnic and gender studies program and political science department at Highline College. She received her PhD in political science with an emphasis in feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in political science, women’s studies, and Spanish language and literature. She is the co-author of a book manuscript that examines the emergence, contemporary landscape, and significance of Asian Pacific American elective officeholding over the past half century and centers the stories of women and men who have fought to advance equal opportunity and social justice. Her current research examines the political socialization, electoral trajectories, and legislative advocacy of these and other transformative leaders elected to subnational offices, as well as the relationship between grassroots community-based organizations and APA political representation in municipal and state level governments.
PROJECT TITLE: Integration and Anti-Discrimination at Crossroads—Muslim Refugee Women in the German Labor Market
LARA-ZUZAN GOLESORKHI
Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi is an assistant professor of political science and global affairs and the co-director of the gender, women, and sexuality studies program at the University of Portland (USA). Her work is concerned with issues that pertain to the intersection of migration and gender in a global context. Golesorkhi’s scholarship examines how gender dynamics configure migration experiences in origin-, passing-, and destination countries, and how these experiences are informed by structural factors.
Her latest publications include: “Protection by whom, for whom? Muslim refugee women face a contested European identity” in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism and "Women, Peace, and Security in the Venezuelan Situation: Centering Civil Society Efforts and Envisioning the Role of the United Nations" in Ideas for Peace by the United Nations University of Peace.
Golesorkhi is also the Founder, Executive Director, and Advocacy Director at the Center for Migration, Gender, and Justice (CMGJ). CMGJ is a non-profit NGO that addresses migrant rights and gender justice through education, research, and advocacy. Most recently, Golesorkhi curated an event at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and directed CMGJ’s Leadership Program which trains migrant youth for collective action against gender-based violence.
PROJECT TITLE: Asian American Responses to Stereotypes and Implications for Identity
VIVIEN LEUNG
Vivien Leung (she/they) is an assistant professor of political science at Bucknell University. Their research areas are in race and ethnic politics, political psychology, immigration, and American politics. More specifically, they are interested in the racialization of Asian Americans and how context shapes identity formation and influences behavior. Currently, Vivien is working on a book manuscript entitled But Where Are You Really From? Microaggressions, Discrimination, and Asian Americans that examines the how interpersonal experiences with exclusion shape Asian Americans’ perceptions of pan-ethnicity.
PROJECT TITLE: Teaching LGBTQ Politics
ERIN MAYO-ADAM
Erin Mayo-Adam, Edward Kammerer, and RG Cravens teach political science at Hunter College, Idaho state university, and California State Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. They are co-editing the first volume on teaching LGBTQ politics in the country with scholars across a variety of subfields in political science.
Project collaborators: Edward Kammerer, Idaho State University;
R.G. Cravens, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
PROJECT TITLE: Muslim American Political Behavior
NURA SEDIQE
Nura Sediqe is a political scientist specializing in race and ethnic politics. She is completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University’s School of Public and international Affairs before she begins her term as assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University. She studies the effects of the changing racial climate on politicized minorities, with a particular focus on Muslims in the United States.
PROJECT TITLE: Roadblocks to Access: Preceptions of Migrants’ Rights in South Africa
KIRA TAIT
Kira Tait is a recent graduate from UMass Amherst and a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in the department of criminology, law and society. In her dissertation, she explores ordinary people’s perceptions of the law and rights and how they impact people’s choice to go to court when they have problems accessing constitutionally guaranteed services in South Africa. Specifically, she studies why people choose not to use courts to secure access to water, healthcare, education, and housing. Kira’s research has been funded by the US Fulbright Program, the National Science Foundation, and the UMass Graduate School. She will be joining the department of political science and International relations at the University of San Diego in Fall 2022.
PROJECT TITLE: Affirmative Action in Brazilian Graduate Education: Patterns of Institutional Change
ANNA VENTURINI
Anna Venturini is a postdoctoral fellow at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning—CEBRAP. She received a PhD in political science at the Institute for Social and Political Studies—IESP of the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). She also holds a Master’s degree in public law (2014) and a BA in Law (2010), both from the University of São Paulo (USP). She was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and is currently a board member of the Harvard Alumni Club of Brazil. She uses mixed methods to analyze the intersections of affirmative action and public policies, race, ethnicity, gender, and institutional change. Her research has been published or is forthcoming at the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, the Revista de Administração Pública, Novos Estudos Cebrap, Cadernos de Pesquisa—FCC, among others. She developed the Observatory of Affirmative Action in Graduate Education (obaap), which monitors Brazilian graduate programs (PPGs) and public universities that adopt affirmative action (AAs) in their admission processes.
PROJECT TITLE: Drowning in Desire: Political-Economic Dimensions of Sexual Politics
ALENA WOLFLINK
Alena Wolflink is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver. She is a political theorist of democratic agency and identity. Her current research examines the construction of narratives about democracy and citizenship through analyses of the undercurrents of race, gender, and sexuality discourses in the language of political economy. Wolflink’s work has been published in such venues as Theory & Event, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Philosophy & Global Affairs.
PROJECT TITLE: Uneven Egalitarianism: Sex, Gender, and Corporate Power in the Postwar United States
JOANNA WUEST
Joanna Wuest studies identity, inequality, and American political and constitutional development. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 and was the Reunion-Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University from 2019-2022. Wuest’s research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Association of University Women, and has been the recipient of the Kenneth Sherrill Award for the Best Dissertation on Sexuality and Politics among other APSA paper awards. Her academic work has appeared or is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics, Polity, Politics & Gender, Law & Social Inquiry, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, nonsite, and various edited volumes. Her public writing has been published by the Nation, Boston Review, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dissent, Psyche, Philosophical Salon, and Jacobin. Her first book, Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (advance contract with the University of Chicago Press), examines the power, tenacity, and limits of LGBTQ+ citizenship claims based upon medical and scientific authority. Currently, she is writing a second book tentatively titled Uneven Egalitarianism: Civil Rights, Corporate Power, and American Constitutionalism. ■
