Project Title: Beyond Demographics: Investigating the Influence of Minority-Owned Businesses on Minority Political Participation
Jongwoo Jeong, Georgia State University
Jongwoo Jeong is an assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University. His research focuses on American political behavior and institutions, with particular emphasis on race, immigration, and polarization. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as AJPS, JOP, BJPS, Political Behavior, and Politics, Groups, and Identities. He is currently leading a project that investigates how minority-owned businesses shape political participation, ambition, and representation in high-minority communities across the United States, with a particular focus on Georgia. Recognizing these communities as both vulnerable to political marginalization and rich in civic potential, the project underscores the importance of understanding how place-based institutions foster political resilience and grassroots mobilization. He also collaborates with criminology scholar Young-An Kim to examine how these businesses influence the policy behavior of street-level bureaucrats and local crime patterns. He earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2022 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.
About the APSA Advancing Research Grants for Early Career Scholars
The APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grants are open to all to provide research support that examines political science phenomena affecting underserved communities and underrepresented groups. In July 2025, APSA awarded 11 projects for the APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grant for Early Career Scholars for a combined total award amount of $22,000.