Meet Elva Orozco Mendoza, 2020 Career Enhancement Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has named 32 new Career Enhancement Fellows—10 junior faculty members who will receive 12-month Fellowships, 20 who will receive six-month Fellowships, and two who will receive six-month Adjunct Faculty Fellowships. The Career Enhancement Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, seeks to increase the presence of underrepresented junior and other faculty members in the arts and humanities by creating career development opportunities for selected Fellows with promising research projects. The program provides Fellows with a six-month or one-year sabbatical stipend (up to $30,000); a research, travel, or publication stipend (up to $1,500); mentoring; and participation in a professional development retreat.

The 2020 Career Enhancement Fellows represent top institutions from across the country. Fellows work in such disciplines as African American and diaspora studies, English, LGBTQ studies, political science, sociology, and musicology. Administered at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation since 2001, the Career Enhancement Fellowship has supported more than 400 junior faculty members, creating a robust network of scholars committed to eradicating racial disparities in core fields in the arts and humanities.

Elva Orozco Mendoza is an assistant professor of political science at Texas Christian University. She joined TCU in the fall of 2017. Orozco Mendoza received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in February of 2015. Prior to joining Texas Christian University, Dr. Orozco Mendoza taught at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. Orozco Mendoza has been a member and regular participant at APSA since 2013.

Her research interests include extreme gender violence, democratic theory and practice, protest politics and political action in Latin America, critical approaches to state sovereignty, and comparative political theory. Dr. Orozco Mendoza is currently working on a book manuscript where she develops the concept of the maternal contract. Her research has been published in journals such as Theory & Event, New Political Science, and the Journal of Latin American Geography, among others. Her research has been translated into Turkish and published in the journal Kültür ve Siyasette Feminist Yaklaşımlar. During the fall of 2019, Dr. Orozco Mendoza received the Claudia V. Camp Research and Creativity Award for academic excellence at Texas Christian University. She can be reached at e.orozcomendoza@tcu.edu