Mackenzie Taradalsky (she/her) is a second-year PhD student in the department of government at Georgetown University, where she specializes in American politics with a focus on race, gender, gender expression, sexuality, and political institutions. She is also a member of Georgetown’s Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Politics (GREP) Lab. Her research explores the political experiences of Black lesbian politicians in U.S. legislatures through a mixed-methods approach that includes interviews, media analysis, archival research, and experimental design. Mackenzie is particularly interested in developing intersectional frameworks that more accurately capture how power and discrimination shape the institutional experiences of multiply marginalized individuals. She earned her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she graduated with high honors and was a distinguished Ronald E. McNair Scholar. After completing her PhD, she plans to continue producing research that centers marginalized voices and to inspire future scholars to critically engage with questions of power, identity, and inequality in U.S. politics.
The APSA Diversity Fellowship Program, 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. APSA has once again awarded a new cycle to provide support for students currently in their first or second year as of Spring 2025. Please join us in congratulating the 2025-2026 class of fellows.
- Learn more about DFP at https://apsanet.org/dfp
- Meet the 2025-2026 class of DFP Fellows