Meet MFP Spring Fellow, Maya Camargo-Vemuri, Johns Hopkins 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.

Maya Camargo-Vemuri is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Her research focuses on sexual violence, identity, political trauma, and memory in genocide and mass violence. She is interested in how political trauma is remembered and memorialized, the interplay between violence and identity, and how gender and sexuality impact how violence is experienced. In 2019, she was a Graduate Research Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she researched sexual violence in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Maya graduated from American University with a BA in International Affairs and Literature. In 2017, she graduated from University of Maryland with an MPP, with a dual specializing in International Security and Economic Policy, and Conflict, Justice and Ethics. After graduating, she was a Boren Fellow in Senegal, where she studied state corruption and human security in West Africa. Prior to beginning her PhD, she was a visiting researcher in Peru, where she investigated state abuses of human rights and earned a Certificate in Humanitarian Law, Human Rights, and Armed Conflict at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.