In November 2021, APSA awarded the inaugural APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grants to research projects in the following areas: Early Career Scholars and Indigenous Politics. A total of 18 awards were made. This year the Research Advancement for Early Career Scholars Grant supported 10 projects for a total award amount of $25,000 and the Research Advancement for Indigenous Politics Grant supported eight projects for a total award amount of $20,000    

 

Read about the funded research projects below.

 

Early Career Scholar Grant: What was Promised, What is Owed

 

Researcher Biographies

Elizabeth Jordie Davis, John Hopkins University

Dr. 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. 

Jordie’s book project Alienated Activism: The Political Possibilities of Black Lives Matter proposes the framework “Alienated Activism” to describe social movements and political participation in response to crises in legitimation and neoliberalism, especially the Black Lives Matter movement. She is in the process of converting her dissertation into a book manuscript.

Jordie has published and forthcoming research in Politics, Groups, and Identities, Social Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Her research has been supported by Berkeley’s Center on Democracy and Organizing, and she was awarded the Ford Fundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, the Diversifying Faculty in Illinois Fellowship, and the APSA Minority Fellows Grant.

Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University

David J. Knight, University of Chicago

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Bridging Grassroots Movements and Legislative Advocacy through Asian American Feminist Praxis

Researcher Biography:

 

Nicole Filler, Highline College

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.

 

 

 

 

Early Career Scholar Grant: Integration and Anti-Discrimination at Crossroads – Muslim Refugee Women in the German Labor Market

Researcher Biography

 

Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi, University of Portland

Dr. 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 into 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.
 

 Early Career Scholar Grant: Asian American Responses to Stereotypes and Implications for Identity

 Researcher Biography

 

Vivien Leung, Bucknell University

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 panethnicity. 

 

 

 

 

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Teaching LGBTQ Politics

Researcher Biographies:

 

Erin Mayo-Adam, Hunter College, CUNY 

Edward Kammerer, Idaho State University

R.G. Cravens, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo 

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.

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Muslim American Political Behavior

Researcher Biography

 

Nura Sediqe, Princeton University

Dr. 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. 

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Roadblocks to Access: Perceptions of Migrants’ Rights in South Africa.

Researcher Biography

 

Kira Tait, University of California, Irvine

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 U.S. 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. 
 

 

 

 

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Affirmative Action in Brazilian Graduate Education: patterns of institutional change

Researcher Biography

 

Anna Venturini, Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP)

Anna Venturini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning – CEBRAP. She received a Ph.D. 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.`

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Drowning in Desire: Political-Economic Dimensions of Sexual Politics

Researcher Biography

 

Alena Wolflink, University of Denver  

Alena Wolflink is 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. 

 

Early Career Scholars Grant: Uneven Egalitarianism: Sex, Gender, and Corporate Power in the Postwar U.S.

Researcher Biography 

 

Joanna Wuest, Princeton University

Joanna Wuest studies identity, inequality, and American political and constitutional development. She received her Ph.D. 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.