Research Round-Up: Hear from 2024 CISS Summer Mini-Grant Recipients
This article was written by Anne Joseph (CAS’25), an intern in the Summer Writing Internship Program focused on social science writing.
In Spring 2024, CISS awarded 29 professors, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students in the social sciences funding to support their summer research. These mini-grants are designed to address five main needs: Undergraduate Research Assistance, Research Consultancies, Travel, Training Support, and Research Supplies.
Learn more about the grant recipients’ projects and their summer research plans and progress. This is the first of three articles to be published this summer following the research of our present and past mini-grantees. This first feature highlights the work of four graduate student grant recipients who are working in wide-ranging fields: Katie Wynn, a PhD student in the History Department; Chas Walker, a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department; Andrea Beltrán-Lizarazo, a PhD student in the Sociology Department; and Bo Feng, a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department who was awarded the grant in 2023 and has since received a prestigious 2024 American Political Science Association (APSA) Fellowship to further support his minigrant-funded project.
Katie Wynn, GRS, History
Katie Wynn is entering her second-year as a PhD student in the History Department and has launched her first research project. Wynn’s research focuses on British imperial politics during the Boer War, examining how the Independent Labour Party navigated issues of disinformation that shaped political narratives. Her project asks central questions regarding access to political literacy and reliable information.
As Wynn observed, “[What is the point if the] quality of the information environment is poor? It kind of forces us to think about it in a different way.”
Wynn learned about the CISS Mini-Grant program through recommendations from her advisor and peers in the History Department. She recalls, “It was pretty early in the process to be going on [my] own research trip,” but one of Wynn’s professors emphasized that “‘You got to get in the archives if you want your own research.’” With CISS funding, Wynn is planning research trips to institutions like the London School of Economics and Manchester’s Labor Study Center to access crucial archival materials.
Wynn’s experience reflects the novelty of a researcher’s first archival trip as she shares “it’s been a learning curve for me this past month of like, how do you plan a research trip? Because when you make an appointment at these archives, they say, Okay, and what materials would you like to see? And I’m the kind of person where [I want to] browse myself…but you can’t do that in an archive. You have to, to a certain extent, be like, I want to look at this, this and this. So that’s been my learning curve…and I think the learning is only going to continue.”
Moving forward, Wynn plans to apply for additional funding to expand her research scope and possibly present her findings at academic conferences.
Chas Walker, GRS, Political Science
Chas Walker, a PhD candidate within the Political Science Department, focuses on the history of labor upsurges in the US, focusing on the public sector union movement of the 1960s, and the conditions that contributed to its success.
Walker discovered the CISS Mini-Grant program through recommendations from his department’s Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Rosella Cappella Zielinski. He shares, “Our DGS in Political Science has encouraged us to use CISS as a resource to get help with applying for external grants, to attend workshops and talks, etc.”
With CISS funding, Walker is embarking on research trips to archives in Detroit, New York City, and other regions to collect primary sources essential for his dissertation related to American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Black workers in the era and regions he is focused on. Looking ahead, Walker plans to seek additional funding to expand his research and further develop his dissertation into a book that outlines scholarly and popular knowledge about the pathways to union growth in the United States.
Andrea Beltrán-Lizarazo, GRS, Sociology
Andrea Beltrán-Lizarazo, a PhD student in Sociology, investigates US extradition practices from Colombia, focusing on the discrepancies between public perception and reality. The CISS Mini-Grant funding will allow Beltrán-Lizarazo to create “a comprehensive database of Colombian extradition cases—approximately 3,000 cases over the last 20 years.”
Beltrán-Lizarazo applied for the CISS Mini-Grant program after reading about it in the CISS Weekly Digest. With CISS funding, Beltrán-Lizarazo is hiring an undergraduate research assistant proficient in data science to help create a comprehensive database from court records. She elaborates on the role of this RA as, “this undergraduate assistant will be essential for extracting data from Bloomberg Law, developing scripts to automate the data extraction process, and cleaning the data to ensure its usability.”
Beltrán-Lizarazo plans to apply for additional funding to expand her database and conduct further data analysis to influence US foreign drug policy discussions.
Bo Feng, GRS, Political Science
Bo Feng is a PhD candidate studying Political Science and he has been researching the allocation of discretionary authority within single-party regimes, using China as a case study.
Feng discovered the CISS Mini-Grant program in 2023 through recommendations from colleagues in his program. He expresses his enthusiasm for the “local community in [his] department” that would share information about funding grants in their Whatsapp group. Following Summer 2023, Feng received advice from his peers to apply for a American Political Science Association (APSA) Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant and is now a fellow with the program.
With CISS and APSA Fellowship support, Feng plans to hire research assistants proficient in Mandarin and computational skills to expand his dataset and analyze government documents more effectively. Feng reflects on his process of finding RAs as he believes “the CISS grant and also the APSA fellowship [were] really helpful…I actually [found] like, three or five students applying for the job [after advertising]. But during the last summer, I could only hire one, but after I got a fellowship from APSA, I could hire more.” Feng used CISS platforms for preparing and disseminating his job ad to undergraduates.
In summer 2024, Feng hopes to complete his data analysis by the end of July to start writing the first paper of his dissertation during August.
Thank you to all our recipients this year and for these four scholars for sharing their experiences so far! Best of luck to our scholars embarking on research journeys this summer – stay tuned for more updates on our grantees soon!