In December 2022, APSA awarded six projects for the APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grants for Indigenous Politics for a combined award amount of $12,000. Read about the funded research projects below.

Project Title: Native Representation in Congress: The Policy Choices of Indigenous Members 

Researcher Bio: 

Elise Blasingame, University of Georgia

Elise Blasingame (Osage) is a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, where she studies Native American politics and issues of representation. Her research focuses on the conditions under which underrepresented and marginalized communities succeed in achieving their policy goals within the American political system. 

Project Title: Indigenous Peoples Before United States Courts: A Systematic Examination 

Researcher Bios:

Todd A. Curry, University of Texas at El Paso

Dr. Todd A. Curry is an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. His primary area of research is state supreme courts, where he advances an audience-based approach to explaining how judges behave on and off the bench. His research has been published in numerous outlets including the Journal of Politics, Journal of Law and Courts, and PS: Political Science & Politics. His recent book with Michael Romano, Creating the Law: State Supreme Court Opinions and the Effect of Audiences, examines how judges strategically craft their opinions differently depending on their primary constituency. He is also a co-PI along with Rebecca Reid and Mark Hurwitz on the $400,000 National Science Foundation grant, “Indigenous Peoples Before United States Courts: A Systematic Examination.” Beyond academia, he is a founding member and board chair for Justice for our Neighbors El Paso, an organization dedicated to providing free legal services to asylum seekers detained in the El Paso Border Sector.  

Rebecca A. Reid, University of Texas at El Paso

Dr. Rebecca A. Reid is an Associate Professor in the department of political science and public administration at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research interests include judicial politics, comparative courts, international law, human rights, indigenous law, gender, and diversification and inclusion. More specifically, she examines how courts and judges make decisions, the impact of these decisions on the rule of law and human rights, and the development and interaction of laws across international and domestic spheres. She has published research in journals such as Political Research Quarterly, American Politics Research, Journal of Law and Courts, the Justice System Journal, and PS: Political Science & Politics. 

Project Title: Hawaiian National Archive Research Project 

Researcher Bio:

Leilani DeLude, University of New Mexico

Leilani DeLude is a Kanaka Maoli scholar and activist from Wai’anae, Oʻahu. She is a first-year Ph.D. student in political science at the University of New Mexico. Leilani’s research interests include Indigenous political behavior, land, and social movements on Hawaiian sovereignty; Indigenous data sovereignty; settler colonialism; Indigenous feminist theories; and decolonization. Leilani is involved with community-based participatory research and understanding how Indigenous relations to land, sovereignty, and Indigenous identity play a role in political behavior. Leilani plans to use the funds from this grant to conduct research at the Richard Kekuni Blaisdell Hawaiian National Archive. 

Project Title: Collaborative Governance on Idaho Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Policy 

Researcher Bio:

Melanie Fillmore, Boise State University

Melanie Fillmore (they/them/she/her) is urban mixed Hunkpapa, Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota. Their research is an iterative process to understand the impacts of settler-colonialism on collaborative governance on Idaho's missing and murdered Indigenous persons policy. 

Project Title: Indigenous Representatives and Representation in the American States 

Researcher Bios:

Rick Witmer, Creighton University

Rick Witmer is the Rev. John P. Schlegel, SJ, Distinguished Professor in Politics and Government in the department of political science and international relations at Creighton University. His teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of American Indian politics and policy, intergovernmental relations, and American politics. He has published research in numerous political science journals including the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Indigenous Policy Journal, and Human Rights Review. He is co-author of Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood, University of Oklahoma Press.  

Eric Hansen, Loyola University Chicago

Eric Hansen is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Loyola University Chicago. His research focuses on legislative politics and representation. He has written about the occupational backgrounds of lawmakers, minority and constituency representation, policy diffusion, and the relationship between education and voting. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and Political Behavior. He teaches courses on U.S. political institutions and research methods. 

Project Title: Citizenship By Blood: Examining the Legacy of Indigenous American Blood Quantum Standards

Researcher Bio:

Alex Zhao, University of California at San Diego

Alex Zhao is a PhD student in the department of political science at the University of California at San Diego. His research focuses on institutional and behavioral politics in Indigenous Nations across the United States, but anticipates expanding his work into a regional focus on the Anglosphere. More specifically, he examines the role of Indigenous American preferences in shaping governance in their own nations and in regards to relations with their neighbors. In his current project, Alex uses a conjoint survey experiment to examine how important blood quantum standards are compared to other features of identity in Indigenous Americans preference intensity for conferring citizenship to outsiders. In addition, he collaborates with various Indigenous and non-Indigenous policy makers and researchers to contribute back to the communities he investigates.