Maya Kerr Coste is a second-year PhD student in Penn State’s Political Science Department. Her subfield is American politics. Maya’s research examines how the boundaries of “legitimate” political violence shift during periods of racial and political change in the United States. She studies how perceptions of threat, moral status, and political belonging are constructed and contested through elite signaling and racial status dynamics. Her current work experimentally analyzes the impact of elite moral framing and normative cues about social groups to influence public attitudes toward political violence. By centering the role of race, power, and group hierarchy in structuring these attitudes, Maya seeks to deepen our understanding of the conditions under which political violence becomes tolerated or justified in democratic contexts. Her work aims to advance both the understanding of political violence and also identify pathways for reducing public tolerance for harm and exclusion.
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 2026. Please join us in congratulating the 2026-2027 class of fellows.
- Learn more about DFP at https://apsanet.org/dfp
- Meet the 2026-2027 class of DFP Fellows
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