Amanda S. Chen is a first-year Ph.D. student at Cornell University studying the effects of institutional constraints on American political development, specifically as it relates to race and ethnicity politics and historical institutionalist analysis. During her undergraduate career at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, she co-authored two papers, one of which quantitatively investigates how people can engage in political discourse within seemingly non-political online discussion forums, and the other of which qualitatively explores tools to best address campus sexual violence. More recently, her research has focused on analyzing how federalism shaped efforts of democratization and racial progress in the United States and Brazil during each country’s post-abolition periods. At Cornell, she is a research assistant to Dr. Jamila Michener, and she is the graduate coordinator for the Politics of Race, Immigration, Class & Ethnicity Initiative. As she progresses through her doctoral studies, Amanda hopes to use mixed methods to continue studying how the historical contexts of institutions impact democratic stability and social equity today.
The APSA Diversity Fellowship Program (DFP), formerly the Minority Fellowship Program, was established in 1969 as a fellowship competition to diversify the political science profession. The DFP provides support to students applying to, or in the early stages of, a PhD program in political science. Since its inception, the DFP has designated more than 600 fellows and contributed to the successful completion of doctoral political science programs for over 100 individuals. APSA has once again awarded a new cycle to provide support for PhD students currently in their first or second year as of Spring 2024. Please join us in congratulating the 2024-2025 class of fellows.
- Learn more about DFP at https://apsanet.org/dfp