{"id":1772,"date":"2026-01-29T17:06:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/?page_id=1772"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:11:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:11:46","slug":"2025-icer-fellows","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/fellows\/2025-icer-fellows\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 ICER Fellows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Samantha Canty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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David Conley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Danny Cowser<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Clement Damoah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Shannon Gibson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Luz Yadira Herrera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ojooluwa Ibiloye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kaneesha Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Fawziyah Laguide<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Jessica HyunJeong Lee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Savanna Lyons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Michele McLaughlin Zamora<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pradipto Vaskar Rakshit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Alisson Rowland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Anibal Serrano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ivan Steenkamp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Rina Verma Williams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Jonathan Wong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Xiaodong (Sergey) Yan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Samantha Canty<\/strong> is a sixth-year doctoral student in the Political Science department at the University of California, Irvine where she also received her master\u2019s degree in political science. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Florida Gulf Coast University.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her research integrates work on race, Black political behavior, political psychology, and gender to create a theoretical framework that examines how the political socialization of Black women in Black communities influences how and why they participate in politics. Her research agenda has two overarching aims: The first is to investigate how the intersections of race, gender, and class influences unique forms of cooperation among Black women. The second is to examine the psycho-political tools that influences political engagement among Black women. Her work makes significant contributions to the study of racial and Black feminist politics while expanding the growing collection of survey and focus group data that helps to understand the factors that influence Black women\u2019s political choices. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. David Conley<\/strong> is an assistant professor in UNCW\u2019s School of Social Work. Conley\u2019s teaching focuses on the intersections between policy practice, social welfare, political social work, and legislative advocacy, most notably the impact that social workers can have on creating and influencing policy and politics. His research focuses on political social work and highlights the social and political determinants of social welfare policy processes, including forms of structural stigma present in legislatures.\u00a0

Prior to academia, Conley learned the policy processes that shape the welfare state through his work as a state senate intern, public policy manger, and lobbyist. Based on these experiences as well as his research agenda, Conley created UNCW\u2019s Political Social Work Initiative (PSWI) in order to maximize the political power of social workers. David holds a Bachelor of Science from Virginia Tech as well as MSW\/PhD degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Danny Cowser<\/strong>, <\/strong>from Fruit Heights, Utah, is a Ph.D. candidate in Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Their research focuses on government responsiveness, human rights, immigration, and discrimination, with a particular emphasis on experimental methods. Danny has taught and assisted courses in international relations, survey design, statistics, applied research methods, and American politics. Outside of academia, they love reading, watching Aussie Rules Football, and cheering on Tottenham Hotspur.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Clement Mensah Damoah<\/strong> is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Administration and Policy at Arizona State University, where he also serves as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Technology, Data, and Society. His research explores the intersection of disability and digital inequality, with an emphasis on how digital tools can empower underrepresented communities. Clement\u2019s dissertation examines disparities in internet access, online engagement, and employment outcomes for people with disabilities, using nationally representative survey data spanning nearly a decade. His work highlights how technology-driven solutions can support more equitable public policy and inclusive governance. Originally from Ghana, Clement brings a global perspective to pressing U.S. policy issues and is passionate about using research to advance social and economic opportunity. He has presented at MPSA, APPAM, and COPPR and has co-authored peer-reviewed publications on public-private partnerships, broadband policy, and digital equity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Shannon Gibson<\/strong> has established a multifaceted career at the nexus of academia and actionable global change informed by expertise in environmental politics, public health, social justice, and community-based research. As Founder and Director of the Gibson Climate Justice Lab, Shannon\u2019s work underscores a dedication to climate justice research and policy analysis, particularly at the annual United Nations climate change negotiations. Her professional practice bridges the science-policy-community divide and fosters justice-based dialogue and action in global environmental and health governance.\u00a0 Shannon completed a BS in political science and a BA in public relations from the University of Florida. She earned both an MA and a PhD in international studies at the University of Miami. As an accredited observer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, she studies the role of youth, Indigenous, women\u2019s, and other climate justice voices in the fight to create fair and equitable climate treaties and solutions. Shannon serves as a professor in environmental studies, political science, and international relations at USC Dornsife and is an affiliated faculty member of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi<\/strong> is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Portland. Her work explores issues that pertain to the intersection of migration and gender with a focus on human rights, laws, and institutions. Golesorkhi is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Migration, Gender, and Justice, a non-profit NGO. As a multi-award-winning scholar-practitioner and as a migrant woman, Dr. Golesorkhi combines expertise in the field and lived experience in her academic and policy work. Golesorkhi\u2019s contributions have been published in Politics & Gender, Data & Policy, and Feminist Economics, and have been featured by numerous UN agencies (IOM, UNHCR, WHO).\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Dr. Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal<\/strong> served for two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he designed and taught courses in American politics, public policy in the age of big data, research methods, and capstone seminars. In Fall 2024, he designed and developed a big data-driven public policy and digital governance course grounded in applied training from Harvard Business School Online and ICPSR. His research uses public opinion surveys and administrative data to explore political behavior, economic perceptions, and public opinion. Dr. Afzal\u2019s work has been presented at APSA, AAPOR, SPSA, and MPSA. He was selected as a 2025 AAPOR Burns \u201cBud\u201d Roper Fellow and will attend Vanderbilt\u2019s LAPOP Summer School. Dr. Afzal has taught at Kent State and UTC and is passionate about collaborative research, mentorship, and professional development<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Luz Yadira Herrera, Ph.D.<\/strong> is a teacher, researcher, author, and co-founder of the En Comunidad Collective. She is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Dr. Herrera’s teaching and research are in culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy, translanguaging, critical pedagogies, and bilingual education policy. She is the co-author of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students with Dr. Carla Espa\u00f1a.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Ojooluwa Ibiloye<\/strong> is a PhD student in Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. He studies direct democracy in the administrative state, focusing on bureaucratic procedures and structural arrangements for co-producing public values with citizens. He also serves as Stavros Niarchos Foundation Ithaca Graduate Fellow at the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. In this role, he focuses on research that advances civil discourse in communities and institutions of higher education. His work outside academe, which informs his research on citizen-government co-production, includes leading RuralPro, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization in Nigeria that facilitates collaborative problem-solving between citizens and decision-makers at the local level. Ojooluwa holds a bachelor’s in political science and a master’s in political economy from the University of Abuja, Nigeria. He was named a 2025 Public Administration Theory Network Fellow for his contributions to the field’s theoretical foundation. He also received the U.S. Department of State’s Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders and the International Republican Institute’s McCain Fellowship for Freedom in recognition of his work advancing civic leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Kaneesha Johnson<\/strong> is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will begin as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in July 2025. Her research lies at the intersection of public policy, the criminal legal system, and historical institutionalism within the field of American politics. Broadly, her work surrounds questions of inequality in punishment systems and focuses on how, why, and when the state designs systems of punishment as a form of social control and how communities who are subjected to those forms of control build power to resist oppression.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Fawziyah Laguide <\/strong>is a UC Berkeley alumna and a third-year Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, specializing in American Politics and Political Theory with a minor in African American Studies. Her research examines how race, gender, and political ideology intersect to shape political identity, with a particular focus on education, civic engagement, and the symbolic power of fiction. Her dissertation plans to explore how literary narratives influence democratic belonging and racialized political meaning-making. A former McNair Scholar and APSA Diversity Fellow, Fawziyah has conducted qualitative and survey-based research on ethnoracism, economic insecurity, and group consciousness. She has attended ISA and presented at MPSA and IQMR. Her work appears in both academic and creative writing journals. Passionate about civically engaged scholarship, she brings a multidisciplinary approach grounded in Black feminist thought, political behavior, and narrative analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Jessica HyunJeong Lee<\/strong> is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Fullerton. She received her PhD from UCLA in 2023. Her research interests broadly include racial and ethnic politics, Asian American politics, immigration, citizenship, and political behavior. More specifically, her work explores questions at the intersection of immigration policy and political behavior, examining how immigration policies shape identity, attitudes, and behavior among Asian and Latino immigrant populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Savanna Lyons<\/strong> is a doctoral candidate in Adult Learning and Leadership at the Teachers College at Columbia University. Savanna\u2019s doctoral research focuses on how people learn to build trust across differences in order to take collective action towards shared civic and political goals. Her other research interests include youth civic engagement and the relationship between political polarization and adult learning. As a scholar-practitioner, Savanna has led nonprofit organizations focused on civic engagement and grassroots political advocacy for 12 years, working primarily in Appalachia. Currently she co-manages the U.S. trade association for worker-owned cooperatives, which leads local, state and national grassroots policy advocacy to support employee ownership.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Michele McLaughlin-Zamora<\/strong> is a PhD Candidate at University of California, Santa Barbara. Michele conducts qualitative and multi-method research on collaborative riparian relationships with a focus on ecological justice and urban (de and re)planning.\u00a0\u00a0 Her dissertation explores climate resiliency efforts, analyzing bureaucratic impact on community engagement around water rights in Los Angeles, specifically when typically siloed bureaucracies with a history of institutionalized violence pivot towards social justice amendments. As an undergraduate at California State University, Northridge, Michele was the student director of the Center for Urban Water Resilience and a pre-doctoral fellow with EPA\u2019s Los Angeles Urban Waters Federal Partnership. As a member of APSA’s ICER 2025 Cohort Michele is looking forward to forging collaborations and further building climate leadership skills especially in clearly mapping the oftentimes convoluted Los Angeles ecological landscape. In her free time, Michele loves hiking and roadtripping with her two kids and dog, Haku the Pitsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pradipto Vaskar Rakshit<\/strong> is a humanitarian professional and social researcher with over six years of experience addressing the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. He has worked with leading national and international nonprofits, contributing to programs focused on humanitarian protection, emergency education, gender justice, social inclusion, and grassroots advocacy for marginalized communities. A recipient of the Peace Research Grant from the International Peace Research Association Foundation, Pradipto\u2019s work bridges academic research and field practice. His interests include data-driven humanitarian action, forced migration, social movements, and conflicts rooted in race, ethnicity, and religion. He holds both a bachelor\u2019s and a master\u2019s degree in International Relations from the University of Dhaka, is skilled in participatory research design and qualitative analysis, and has published in peer-reviewed, Scopus-indexed journals. An active civic participant, Pradipto remains committed to refugee protection, human rights, and social justice in repressive and crisis-affected contexts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alisson Rowland<\/strong> is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Their research focuses on international political economy, human rights, labor rights and community organizing. Alisson\u2019s dissertation assesses the strategies sex workers use to combat employment and institutional-based precarity. They draw on archival and ethnographic methods to demonstrate how people combat stigma and criminality to advance their rights. They have published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Di\u00e1logo com a Economia Criativa, APSA\u2019s Strategies for Navigating Graduate School and Beyond, and have forthcoming work in Critical Sociology, the Routledge International Handbook of Critical Policing Studies and the SAGE Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender. Their work was generously funded by the Haynes Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, ISA, UCI’s Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and its Center for Organizational Research. They\u2019ve received ISA\u2019s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section Award for Best Graduate Paper and UC Irvine\u2019s David Easton Award for Best Paper.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anibal Serrano<\/strong> was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and is the son of working-class Mexican immigrant parents. He is a first-generation scholar and is currently a Political Science PhD candidate at UC Irvine. He is a former high school teacher in South Central with extensive experiences working with currently and formerly incarcerated youth and system-impacted youth and families in Los Angeles. His research lies at the intersection of race and political economy, violence, carcerality, and critical youth studies. In specific, his research draws on various qualitative approaches to examine how racially minoritized youth navigate symbolic, psychological, and physical violence in schools, courts, and carceral facilities. Currently, he partners with various community-based organizations and serves as a youth worker in various juvenile carceral centers and juvenile prisoner reentry programs in Los Angeles County.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ivan Steenkamp<\/strong> is a South African academic and strategic consultant with over 15 years of experience in organisational development, project management, and public policy. He is currently completing a PhD in Business Administration at UNICAF University, Zambia, where his research focuses on a conceptual governance framework for social enterprises in South Africa. Ivan is the CEO of Evers Xcellence Management Consulting and founder of the Aqua Energy Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank advancing climate resilience, water management, and sustainable development in the Global South. His research interests include social and solidarity economies, ESG, and the just energy transition. He has served as a part-time tutor at UNISA and CUT and has authored several academic publications. Ivan has participated in global forums including EMES, RUC, and ILO conferences, and holds a valid U.S. visa. He is passionate about fostering equitable development through collaborative research and evidence-based policy innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rina Verma Williams (Ph.D. Harvard) <\/strong>is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Social Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. She is also Affiliate Faculty in Sociology; Asian Studies; and Women\u2019s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She has published and taught extensively on religion, gender and nationalism in international politics and the developing world, most recently focusing on women in right-wing political parties and democracy in India. She has also worked in some areas of community- and civically-engaged research, including a gender analysis of the City of Cincinnati\u2019s Department of Economic and Community Development (as part of Cities for CEDAW); and an assessment of the United Way of Greater Cincinnati. As Associate Dean, she is establishing an \u201cAction Collaborative\u201d to support community- and civically-engaged work across 15 interdisciplinary, translational, and community-engaged Centers and Institutes across the College of Arts & Sciences at UC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jonathan Wong<\/strong> (he\/him) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, School of Public Administration, where he also teaches courses in Public Administration and Policy. Recently, he joined the Heartland Civic Mobility Research as a Graduate Research Assistant, contributing to research on civic engagement, public policy, nonprofit organizations, and youth participation. Jonathan’s research focuses on deliberative civic engagement within policy design and policymaking processes. He is particularly interested in the decision-making dynamics and rationales that drive policy initiatives aimed at advancing social and racial equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Xiaodong (Sergey) Yan<\/strong> (He\/Him\/His) is a doctoral student in Research Track \u2013 Community and Social Interaction, Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder. He is a Research Assistant at Center for Communication and Democratic Engagement, and a Graduate Fellow at Barney Ford Lab for Civic Thought and Engagement. Before moving to the U.S., He obtained a B.A. (2021) in The Art of Announcing and Anchoring from Liaoning University, China, and an M.A. (2024) in Communication from Wuhan University, China. His recent publications appear in Digital Journalism, Asian Journal of Communication, and China: An International Journal. His research interests center on Civic Activities and Democratic Engagement. Specifically, His works explore how Communication Praxis can facilitate Democratic Deliberation, improve Political Discourse Quality, and promote Communicative Democracy and Political Egalitarianism. He also focuses on the intersectional dynamics of Gender (Sexuality) and Ethnic Politics, primarily employing Critical Approaches to examine how Stigmatized, Marginalized, and Dirtied People negotiate and reclaim their autonomous identities in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Samantha Canty is a sixth-year doctoral student in the Political Science department at the University of California, Irvine where she also received her master\u2019s degree in political science. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Florida Gulf Coast University.\u00a0\u00a0 Her research integrates work on race, Black political behavior, political psychology, and gender to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70034,"featured_media":0,"parent":631,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"zakra_sidebar_layout":"customizer","zakra_remove_content_margin":false,"zakra_sidebar":"customizer","zakra_transparent_header":"customizer","zakra_logo":0,"zakra_main_header_style":"default","zakra_menu_item_color":"","zakra_menu_item_hover_color":"","zakra_menu_item_active_color":"","zakra_menu_active_style":"","zakra_page_header":true,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1772","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1772\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/icer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}