Meet MFP Spring Fellow, Allegra Hernandez, Rice University

The APSA Minority Fellows Program, established in 1969, aims to increase diversity in the discipline of political science. The Spring MFP supports students from underrepresented backgrounds who are currently enrolled in the first or second year of a political science PhD program. Awards will range between $500 and $1500, depending on availability funds.

Allegra E. Hernandez is a second year PhD student at Rice University. She works to understand how legacies shape current political settings. She is primarily interested in cultural legacies and the effect that it has on institutions and individual behavior. Allegra’s research interests stem from her childhood, where she grew up in the only public school district in the country that busses students from Mexico to the United States every day. The dichotomy between New Mexico’s welcoming policies towards Mexico versus Arizona’s passage of SB-1070 in 2010, which imposed some of the strictest immigration controls in the country, is something that Allegra noticed, but was never able to fully explain – a fact she hopes to rectify at some point. Her current work examines foreign-imposed communism in Eastern Europe during the Cold War to understand how it shapes contemporary attitudes towards international institutions and multiculturalism. In 2017, Allegra graduated from Texas Christian University with a BS in Political Science and a BA in Art History. As an undergraduate, she worked with the Department of State in Albania, where she organized joint military training exercises, and Zambia, where she focused on policies aimed to alleviate ethnic divides following electoral loss.