2020 Fuji MFP Travel Grant Recipients - American Political Science Association (APSA)

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2020 Recipients of the APSA Lee Ann Fujii Minority Fellowship Program Travel Grant

APSA is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 APSA Lee Ann Fujii Minority Fellowship Program Travel Grant. This grant was made possible by the generous contributions of the Fujii Family and Dr. Fujii’s colleagues and friends.

Margaret Brower, University of Chicago
Olivia Janay Cook, Auburn University
Julie George, Cornell University
Gregory John Leslie, University of California
Tye Rush, University of California, Los Angeles
Diane Wong, New York University

2020 Recipients of the APSA Lee Ann Fujii Minority Fellowship Program Travel Grant

Margaret Brower is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago. Prior to the University of Chicago, she worked for the Center for the Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Institute for Higher Education and Democracy (IDHE) at Tufts University to develop a national dataset of registration and voting rates for college students across the U.S. and lead a national qualitative project on college student political learning and engagement. She holds a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Chicago, a Master of Arts in Higher Education and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Education from Colgate University.

Dr. Olivia Janay Cook is a multi-passionate, innovative leader who thrives on helping institutions and organizations develop their human capital to gain greater efficiencies and productivity. A native of Auburn, AL and a tri-alumna of Auburn University, Dr. Cook holds a bachelor’s degree in Polymer and Fiber Engineering, as well as a masters and Ph.D. in Public Administration and Public Policy. As a life-long scholar, she continues her research on the leadership style development process, to focus on an underexplored population, African American women. Her research extensively examines their authentic leadership style development experience by investigating factors that may influence their preferred leadership style.
Beyond her industry and academic accomplishments, Dr. Cook is conversational in Spanish and co-founder of a technology-based start-up company that integrates technology, public/private partnerships, and social media. She is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. These endeavors have assisted her greatly in her work globally, which includes international collaborations in Spanish speaking countries, Canada, Europe, and Africa.

Julie George is a Ph.D. candidate in the Government department at Cornell University, specializing in international security. Broadly, her doctoral research examines the proliferation of emerging technologies and its impact on the probability and nature of conflict and cooperation in the international system. This focus has led her to engage a broad selection of scholarship across science and technology studies, history, international organizations, and law. She presented her paper on “Emerging Technologies: Implications and Prospects of their Proliferation” at the 2020 Virtual APSA Annual Meeting. Currently, she is a RAND Summer Associate in the National Security Research Division working on the national and international security implications of emerging technologies. She is also an APSA Minority Fellow (2019-2020).
Prior to her PhD studies at Cornell University, Julie worked at the Atlantic Council (South Asia Center) and completed a graduate fellowship at the Nonproliferation Education and Research Center (NEREC) housed at KAIST University in South Korea. Her previous work included research on nuclear and cyber security, military expenditures, and trade in East and South Asia. Julie has a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from Boston University, where she received the Best Thesis Award and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Gregory John Leslie is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He graduated from the honors program at New York University with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. At NYU, he worked with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Asia Initiatives, and the World Economic Forum. Prior to graduate school, he worked as an organizer, campaign manager, and political consultant for Democratic candidates throughout the country.
Gregory’s research agenda explores the politics of mixed-race individuals including identity choice, partisanship, attitudes, and turnout. In particular, he is interested in how mixed-race individuals reconcile exposure to divergent racial contexts as they construct and express their racial identities and political preferences. Gregory will use this grant to cover the costs of an experiment testing whether or not biracials’ choices of racial identity and racial attitudes can be affected by priming the salience of one of the racial groups in their heritage. Gregory is also a Co-Principal at Blue Wave Strategies, a company designed to bring political psychology and academic campaign research to bear on the 2020 election cycle.

Tye Rush is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Broadly, Rush specializes in issues of race, ethnicity, and politics but his currently research examines the Voting Rights Act, voting rights, and election administration. Born and raised in San Bernardino, CA, Rush holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and public service from the University of California, Riverside. At UCR, Rush worked as a research assistant in the Department of Political Science and served as a Mellon Advancing Intercultural Studies Fellows at the Center for Ideas and Society. Currently, Rush is a fellow at the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Previously, Rush served as a research fellow at the UCLA Institute for Inequality and Democracy at Luskin and as the Voting and Redistricting Fellow at Common Cause.

Diane Wong is a Provost Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Her interests include American politics, Asian American politics, gender and sexuality, urban governance, comparative immigration, race and ethnicity, cultural and media studies, and community-engaged research. As a first-generation Chinese American born and raised in Flushing, Queens in New York City, her research is intimately tied to the Asian diaspora and urban immigrant experience.
Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, New York Humanities, New York Public Library, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and has appeared in Urban Affairs Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Asian American Policy Review, and a variety of edited book volumes, anthologies, podcasts, and exhibitions. As co-founder of the first junior women of color in political science writing retreat, the funds will go towards building the infrastructure to support this work that engages issues of junior women of color in the discipline