The Harold D. Lasswell Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public policy.
Citation from the Award Committee:
Amid very strong competition, Alice Xu’s dissertation, “Segregation and the Spatial Externalities of Inequality: A Theory of Interdependence and Public Goods in Cities” stands out. It is theoretically ambitious, methodologically creative, deeply rigorous, expertly executed and elegantly crafted. This dissertation develops a new and more enlightened understanding of the factors that underlie support for the provision of public goods in urban settings, in the process opening up new methodological possibilities and theoretical lines of inquiry. The committee agrees that this is research of the highest quality and is thoroughly deserving of the Harold D. Lasswell Prize.
Alice Xu is an Assistant Professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice and Department of Political Science (secondary appointment). She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban and distributive politics, inequality and social policy, and environmental politics in the Global South. She is writing a book on the ways in which class- and race-based segregation in cities shape patterns of urban coalition-building in Brazil and Mexico. Her other projects examine deforestation in the Amazon, urban housing markets and the causes of slum growth, the politics of gentrification, urban climate change adaptation, and informal labor in developing cities. Her research won the Best Paper on Social and Economic Inequality Award from the APSA Class and Inequality Section in 2021, the Paul A. Sabatier Best Conference Paper Award from the APSA Science, Technology, Environmental Politics Section in 2022, and the Best Paper on Urban and Local Politics Award from the APSA Urban Politics Section in 2023.
Alice earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2023. She is a recipient of the Susan Clarke Young Scholar Award from the APSA Urban Politics Section in 2023.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. John Boswell (Chair) of the University of Southampton, Dr. Daniel Fiorino of American University, and Dr. Carolyn Hendriks of Australian National University.