The Empirical Study of Gender Research Network is thrilled to announce the results of the 2025 prize competition. The EGEN prize committee selected 5 Prize Recipients and 3 Honorable Mentions. All of these projects confront crucial topics of gender and politics that stand to make important contributions to the field moving forward.
WINNERS:
Alyssa Heinze is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies gendered understandings of the political economy of local development, political inequality, and the consequences of climate change using mixed methods, with a focus on India. Her dissertation project investigates how control of water resources has changed intra-household gender relations in rural India and women in resource governance institutions. The EGEN prize would support her in running a well-powered survey to study women’s representation in local-level natural resource institutions.
Xiaoxia Huang is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on gender and bureaucracy in China. Using original datasets on bureaucratic hirings in China, her work explores gendered recruitment and advancement in the public sector and examines how institutional norms and policies shape the career trajectories of women. The EGEN prize will fund her to conduct fieldwork in the fall of 2025.
Colette Marcellin is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She studies political behavior, social movements, and public opinion in the US with a focus on gender, racial, and ethnic politics. Her dissertation project uses a multi-method approach to examine women’s political behavior, political attitudes, and group consciousness in the 2017 Women’s March and the #MeToo movement. The EGEN prize would fund her survey experiment in the summer of 2025 for the empirical chapters of her dissertation.
Francesco Raffaelli is a PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the intersection of political behavior and comparative politics, with a geographic focus on Western European countries. His current project examines the politicization of emerging issues such as gender identity, gender-inclusive language, gender-affirmative care, affirmative action, and school curricula. The EGEN prize will allow him to collect original survey data on emerging issues related to gender identity and gender-affirmative care.
Alejandra López Villegas is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Michigan State University. She studies the intersection between democratic backsliding and women’s rights in Latin America, with a special focus on countries governed by left-wing parties. Her current project is a comparative analysis of Brazil and Mexico that uses mixed methods to examine how left-wing incumbents in Latin America use women’s rights strategically to consolidate power. The EGEN prize will support her in conducting fieldwork in El Salvador as another case study for her project.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars – Ha Eun Choi (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Potsdam), Gemma Dipoppa (Assistant Professor, Columbia University), and Shira Pindyck (Assistant Professor, US Naval War College) – for their outstanding projects.
Congratulations!
The EGEN 2025 Prize Award was generously supported by NSF grant #2215500.
WINNERS:
Alyssa Heinze is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies gendered understandings of the political economy of local development, political inequality, and the consequences of climate change using mixed methods, with a focus on India. Her dissertation project investigates how control of water resources has changed intra-household gender relations in rural India and women in resource governance institutions. The EGEN prize would support her in running a well-powered survey to study women’s representation in local-level natural resource institutions.
Xiaoxia Huang is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on gender and bureaucracy in China. Using original datasets on bureaucratic hirings in China, her work explores gendered recruitment and advancement in the public sector and examines how institutional norms and policies shape the career trajectories of women. The EGEN prize will fund her to conduct fieldwork in the fall of 2025.
Colette Marcellin is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She studies political behavior, social movements, and public opinion in the US with a focus on gender, racial, and ethnic politics. Her dissertation project uses a multi-method approach to examine women’s political behavior, political attitudes, and group consciousness in the 2017 Women’s March and the #MeToo movement. The EGEN prize would fund her survey experiment in the summer of 2025 for the empirical chapters of her dissertation.
Francesco Raffaelli is a PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the intersection of political behavior and comparative politics, with a geographic focus on Western European countries. His current project examines the politicization of emerging issues such as gender identity, gender-inclusive language, gender-affirmative care, affirmative action, and school curricula. The EGEN prize will allow him to collect original survey data on emerging issues related to gender identity and gender-affirmative care.
Alejandra López Villegas is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Michigan State University. She studies the intersection between democratic backsliding and women’s rights in Latin America, with a special focus on countries governed by left-wing parties. Her current project is a comparative analysis of Brazil and Mexico that uses mixed methods to examine how left-wing incumbents in Latin America use women’s rights strategically to consolidate power. The EGEN prize will support her in conducting fieldwork in El Salvador as another case study for her project.
Honorable Mentions: We also want to acknowledge the work of three other scholars – Ha Eun Choi (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Potsdam), Gemma Dipoppa (Assistant Professor, Columbia University), and Shira Pindyck (Assistant Professor, US Naval War College) – for their outstanding projects.
Congratulations!
The EGEN 2025 Prize Award was generously supported by NSF grant #2215500.