2024 PRIZE WINNERS:
Emily Myers is a PhD candidate at Duke University who studies gender, conflict, and violence in Nepal. Her current research agenda studies how women’s networks and civilians’ familial relationships transform and are transformed by war and violence, using original data and both quasi-experimental and qualitative methods. The EGEN prize will help her develop a book project based on her dissertation research, which looks at local-level variation in women’s community participation during war, and how durable those changes are after conflict.
Alice Calder (@AliceCalder) is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on the cultural and social factors that incentivise (or disincentivize) women to mobilize for political rights, with a particular focus on the impacts of conflict. Her current project is about the impact of the American Civil War on women’s mobilization for suffrage. The EGEN prize will help her undertake more in-depth archival work on US suffrage and expand her work into the UK, particularly giving her access to conference funding and travel within the US.
Soosun You (@SooSunYou1) is a PhD candidate at University of California - Berkeley, who studies the consequences of broad macro-level changes—shifting demographics and rising economic inequality—for women’s empowerment. Her dissertation uses observational data, survey experiments, and archival data in South Korea to look at politics of the marriage market and the relationship between gender roles and political behavior. The prize will help her fund new research in South Korea related to demographic shifts and the policies of the current administration.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars –Elisabeth (Annie) Jarman (PhD candidate, Washington University in St. Louis), Yujing (Lisa) Fan (PhD candidate, Columbia University), and Nerea Gándara Guerra (European University Institute and EAFIT University) – for their outstanding projects.
Alice Calder (@AliceCalder) is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on the cultural and social factors that incentivise (or disincentivize) women to mobilize for political rights, with a particular focus on the impacts of conflict. Her current project is about the impact of the American Civil War on women’s mobilization for suffrage. The EGEN prize will help her undertake more in-depth archival work on US suffrage and expand her work into the UK, particularly giving her access to conference funding and travel within the US.
Soosun You (@SooSunYou1) is a PhD candidate at University of California - Berkeley, who studies the consequences of broad macro-level changes—shifting demographics and rising economic inequality—for women’s empowerment. Her dissertation uses observational data, survey experiments, and archival data in South Korea to look at politics of the marriage market and the relationship between gender roles and political behavior. The prize will help her fund new research in South Korea related to demographic shifts and the policies of the current administration.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars –Elisabeth (Annie) Jarman (PhD candidate, Washington University in St. Louis), Yujing (Lisa) Fan (PhD candidate, Columbia University), and Nerea Gándara Guerra (European University Institute and EAFIT University) – for their outstanding projects.
2023 PRIZE WINNERS:
Emily Rains (@_emilyrains), is an incoming Assistant Professor of International Development at Tulane University and a former Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. She studies urban politics in developing countries, focusing on how living and working in informal spaces shapes political beliefs and behaviors. Within this area, she is particularly interested in explaining gender gaps in political responses to urban informality and uses original quantitative and qualitative data within Indian “slums”. The EGEN prize will help develop a project on women’s informal leadership within urban slum areas and fund upcoming fieldwork in India, specifically in Patna and Bangalore.
Angie Torres-Beltran (@angietorresbel), was a PhD candidate at Cornell University and is now a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University. She studies gender, violence, and political participation in Latin America (specifically Mexico) and the US, with a particular focus on state-society relations and justice. Her research uses a multi-method analysis of Mexico, based on both quantitative and qualitative data from field research, including new municipal level data on crime reports and women’s electoral participation and interviews with both bureaucrats and civil society organizations across Mexico. The EGEN prize funded archival research and an extension of her survey in Mexico. In 2024, Beltran won the International Studies Association Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Best Graduate Student Paper Award.
Myles Williamson (@myles_sage), is a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama who studies the effect of regime type and religion in the advancements of transgender rights cross nationally. Williamson’s project, “A Global Analysis of Transgender Rights: Introducing the Trans Rights Indicator Project (TRIP),” introduces a measure of transgender rights worldwide from 2000 to 2021, disaggregating data on the “LGBT” community. The paper argues that aggregation neglects the policies and concerns unique to transgender individuals, potentially misrepresenting the protections countries afford these minorities. The EGEN prize will fund summer research and travel to APSA.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of six other scholars –Emily Myers, (PhD candidate, Duke University), Sara Morell (PhD candidate, University of Michigan), Maya Novak-Herzog (PhD candidate, Northwestern University, Ari Ray (Postdoc and Senior Lecturer, University of Geneva), Anirvan Chowdhury (PhD candidate, University of California Berkeley) and Camila Páez-Bernal (Ph.D. candidate, Arizona State University) – for their outstanding projects.
You can read more about the winners' projects here.
Angie Torres-Beltran (@angietorresbel), was a PhD candidate at Cornell University and is now a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University. She studies gender, violence, and political participation in Latin America (specifically Mexico) and the US, with a particular focus on state-society relations and justice. Her research uses a multi-method analysis of Mexico, based on both quantitative and qualitative data from field research, including new municipal level data on crime reports and women’s electoral participation and interviews with both bureaucrats and civil society organizations across Mexico. The EGEN prize funded archival research and an extension of her survey in Mexico. In 2024, Beltran won the International Studies Association Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Best Graduate Student Paper Award.
Myles Williamson (@myles_sage), is a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama who studies the effect of regime type and religion in the advancements of transgender rights cross nationally. Williamson’s project, “A Global Analysis of Transgender Rights: Introducing the Trans Rights Indicator Project (TRIP),” introduces a measure of transgender rights worldwide from 2000 to 2021, disaggregating data on the “LGBT” community. The paper argues that aggregation neglects the policies and concerns unique to transgender individuals, potentially misrepresenting the protections countries afford these minorities. The EGEN prize will fund summer research and travel to APSA.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of six other scholars –Emily Myers, (PhD candidate, Duke University), Sara Morell (PhD candidate, University of Michigan), Maya Novak-Herzog (PhD candidate, Northwestern University, Ari Ray (Postdoc and Senior Lecturer, University of Geneva), Anirvan Chowdhury (PhD candidate, University of California Berkeley) and Camila Páez-Bernal (Ph.D. candidate, Arizona State University) – for their outstanding projects.
You can read more about the winners' projects here.
Emily Rains (@_emilyrains), is an incoming Assistant Professor of International Development at Tulane University and a former Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. She studies urban politics in developing countries, focusing on how living and working in informal spaces shapes political beliefs and behaviors. Within this area, she is particularly interested in explaining gender gaps in political responses to urban informality and uses original quantitative and qualitative data within Indian “slums”. The EGEN prize will help develop a project on women’s informal leadership within urban slum areas and fund upcoming fieldwork in India, specifically in Patna and Bangalore.
Angie Torres-Beltran (@angietorresbel), is a PhD candidate at Cornell University who studies gender, violence, and political participation in Latin America (specifically Mexico) and the US, with a particular focus on state-society relations and justice. Her research uses a multi-method analysis of Mexico, based on both quantitative and qualitative data from field research, including new municipal level data on crime reports and women’s electoral participation and interviews with both bureaucrats and civil society organizations across Mexico. The EGEN prize will fund archival research and an extension of her survey in Mexico.
Myles Williamson (@myles_sage), is a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama who studies the effect of regime type and religion in the advancements of transgender rights cross nationally. Williamson’s project, “A Global Analysis of Transgender Rights: Introducing the Trans Rights Indicator Project (TRIP),” introduces a measure of transgender rights worldwide from 2000 to 2021, disaggregating data on the “LGBT” community. The paper argues that aggregation neglects the policies and concerns unique to transgender individuals, potentially misrepresenting the protections countries afford these minorities. The EGEN prize will fund summer research and travel to APSA.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of six other scholars –Emily Myers, (PhD candidate, Duke University), Sara Morell (PhD candidate, University of Michigan), Maya Novak-Herzog (PhD candidate, Northwestern University, Ari Ray (Postdoc and Senior Lecturer, University of Geneva), Anirvan Chowdhury (PhD candidate, University of California Berkeley) and Camila Páez-Bernal (Ph.D. candidate, Arizona State University) – for their outstanding projects.
You can read more about the winners' projects here.
Angie Torres-Beltran (@angietorresbel), is a PhD candidate at Cornell University who studies gender, violence, and political participation in Latin America (specifically Mexico) and the US, with a particular focus on state-society relations and justice. Her research uses a multi-method analysis of Mexico, based on both quantitative and qualitative data from field research, including new municipal level data on crime reports and women’s electoral participation and interviews with both bureaucrats and civil society organizations across Mexico. The EGEN prize will fund archival research and an extension of her survey in Mexico.
Myles Williamson (@myles_sage), is a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama who studies the effect of regime type and religion in the advancements of transgender rights cross nationally. Williamson’s project, “A Global Analysis of Transgender Rights: Introducing the Trans Rights Indicator Project (TRIP),” introduces a measure of transgender rights worldwide from 2000 to 2021, disaggregating data on the “LGBT” community. The paper argues that aggregation neglects the policies and concerns unique to transgender individuals, potentially misrepresenting the protections countries afford these minorities. The EGEN prize will fund summer research and travel to APSA.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of six other scholars –Emily Myers, (PhD candidate, Duke University), Sara Morell (PhD candidate, University of Michigan), Maya Novak-Herzog (PhD candidate, Northwestern University, Ari Ray (Postdoc and Senior Lecturer, University of Geneva), Anirvan Chowdhury (PhD candidate, University of California Berkeley) and Camila Páez-Bernal (Ph.D. candidate, Arizona State University) – for their outstanding projects.
You can read more about the winners' projects here.
2022 PRIZE WINNERS:
Bhumi Purohit @bhumipurohit, was a PhD student at UC Berkeley before becoming an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She studies gender and comparative politics in India. Her paper “Bureaucratic Resistance Against Female Politicians: Evidence from Telangana, India” argues that bureaucrats often drag their feet on implementing the policies favored by women politician. Gender bias – the belief that women in politics are less effective and competent – combined with career incentives – where men instead of women appear more important for bureaucrats’ future success – each serve to depress the delivery of crucial public services demanded and fought for by women. The EGEN prize will allow Purohit to spend additional time in the field, conducting interviews, focus groups, and shadowing of legislators that will deepen the qualitative insights from this important research. Purohit has won American Political Science Association (APSA)’s William Anderson Award for the best dissertation in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state, and local politics (2023), and APSA’s Women, Gender, and Politics Section’s Best Dissertation Award (2023).
Sumin Lee @sumin_s_lee was PhD student at Rutgers University, USIP Peace Scholar and ACES Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School at Texas A&M. She now holds an assistant professorship at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. She studies International Relations with a focus on sexual violence and domestic accountability surrounding armed group conflict. Her paper “Gender Justice for Whom: Strategic Accountability for Wartime Sexual Violence” presents analyses of an original dataset on domestic accountability for wartime sexual violence in conflict-affected African states between 1998 and 2018. This is the first data set that focuses solely on justice mechanisms adopted in response to sexual violence and that comprehensively documents the different accountability mechanisms, from legislative to judicial. The EGEN prize helped push the project’s mixed-methods components in fruitful directions. In 2023, Sumin's dissertation won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Human Rights Section Best Dissertation Award 2023.
Melina Much (@melina__much) is a PhD student in political science at UC Irvine who studies American Politics and Methodology. Her dissertation interrogates the way that the concept of intersectionality has been used to study marginalization, and uses Bayesian multilevel modeling and machine learning techniques to assess how attention to gender, race, and class would change the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of previous studies. Other work in the realm of data justice asks how “big data” and conversations about the fairness of algorithms do not adequately account for long-term and systemic inequality. The EGEN prize will help push the idea of non-additive models of identity further.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars – , Nirvikar Jassal (rising Assistant Professor of Political Science, LSE), Elizabeth Brannon (rising Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University) and Rithika Kumar (PhD student in political science, University of Pennsylvania) – for their outstanding projects.
Sumin Lee @sumin_s_lee was PhD student at Rutgers University, USIP Peace Scholar and ACES Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School at Texas A&M. She now holds an assistant professorship at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. She studies International Relations with a focus on sexual violence and domestic accountability surrounding armed group conflict. Her paper “Gender Justice for Whom: Strategic Accountability for Wartime Sexual Violence” presents analyses of an original dataset on domestic accountability for wartime sexual violence in conflict-affected African states between 1998 and 2018. This is the first data set that focuses solely on justice mechanisms adopted in response to sexual violence and that comprehensively documents the different accountability mechanisms, from legislative to judicial. The EGEN prize helped push the project’s mixed-methods components in fruitful directions. In 2023, Sumin's dissertation won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Human Rights Section Best Dissertation Award 2023.
Melina Much (@melina__much) is a PhD student in political science at UC Irvine who studies American Politics and Methodology. Her dissertation interrogates the way that the concept of intersectionality has been used to study marginalization, and uses Bayesian multilevel modeling and machine learning techniques to assess how attention to gender, race, and class would change the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of previous studies. Other work in the realm of data justice asks how “big data” and conversations about the fairness of algorithms do not adequately account for long-term and systemic inequality. The EGEN prize will help push the idea of non-additive models of identity further.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars – , Nirvikar Jassal (rising Assistant Professor of Political Science, LSE), Elizabeth Brannon (rising Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University) and Rithika Kumar (PhD student in political science, University of Pennsylvania) – for their outstanding projects.
The EGEN Prize Awards are generously supported by NSF grant #2215500