Rachel O’Neal Receives the 2023 Kenneth Sherrill Prize 

The Kenneth Sherrill Prize is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation proposal for an empirical study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) topics in political science.    

Rachel O’Neal is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder.  O’Neal has a Master’s degree in political science from CU Boulder and a Bachelor’s degree from Creighton University in political science and journalism.  Their research focuses on transgender rights, hetero-cisnormativity, and quantitative queer comparative politics more broadly.  More specifically, O’Neal is interested in how de jure policies unrelated to gender, sex, and sexuality enforce our understanding of each concept.  Currently, they are working on projects related to conversion therapy bans in the US, global gender marker policies, and hetero-cisnormativity in US court cases.  O’Neal’s proposed research agenda also includes research on transgender sex work, initially at the US level with hopes to expand to the global level.

Citation from the Award Committee: 

Rachel O’Neal’s dissertation proposal sets to explain the variation in queer and trans rights in comparative perspective and across the U.S. states.  The project examines key topics in the context of queer rights, including the legality of gender maker changes, conversion therapy bans, and hetero-normative bias in court cases.  Rachel’s work proposes a cyclical, rather than linear, understanding of queer rights developments, which accounts for the emergence of anti-LGBTQ+ efforts and legislation.  The project explores an area of policy making that has received limited attention in the political science literature, and has the potential to make a significant impact on both academic scholarship and policy research.  The committee was especially impressed by Rachel’s broad and ambitious project, which includes the collection of original datasets and the creation of a new index to measure hetero-cisnormativity.

APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Gabriele Magni (chair) of Loyola Marymount University, Dr. Logan S. Casey of Harvard University, and Dr. Gregory B. Lewis of Georgia State University.