Raquel Centeno is a Ph.D. candidate studying American politics and quantitative methods in the Political Science and International Relations department at the University of Southern California. Her research falls largely in the areas of public opinion, political psychology, and political behavior. Much of Raquel’s research is motivated by questions of how voters’ various group identities influence their perceptions of politics, and her dissertation uses the cases of Latino and White partisans to examine how racial status threat fuels partisan polarization. Raquel’s other research also examines how identity interacts with political institutions to influence voter behavior, including studies of how primary systems influence general election turnout among independents and how alternative voting methods influence voter sentiment about elections.

Bruna Dalmas is a graduate student in political science at the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on transitional justice mechanisms and their effects on violence in conflicted democracies. Specifically, she investigates how transitional justice can contribute to the organization of security forces, either helping to prevent or potentially exacerbating the escalation of violence, the emergence of paramilitary groups, and the proliferation of drug cartels. As a comparativist from Latin America, her research primarily examines Brazil and Mexico. Bruna earned her B.A. in international business from the Universidade do Vale do Itajaí before joining the University of Missouri. With the support of the Fund for Latino Scholarship, Bruna plans to continue working on data collection and attend the 2025 APSA Annual Meeting to present her research on the selection of transitional justice mechanisms by Latin American countries.

Francy Luna Diaz is an ABD in political science at the University of Michigan. Her mixed-methods research centers on transnationalism and misinformation, with a dissertation exploring how Latinos who maintain transnational ties differ in their political opinions and behaviors compared to those without such ties. Her findings indicate that Latinos with transnational ties are more likely to use social media, hold favorable views of Trump, and believe that President Biden is promoting socialism in the U.S. These opinions often lead Latinos to align with the right, resulting in a shift away from the Democratic Party or an inclination to join the Republican Party. Francy Luna Diaz’s research has been supported by prestigious awards, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Hanes Walton Jr. Fellowship, the Phillip Converse Fellowship, the Rackham Merit Fellowship, and the APSA Diversity Fellowship. She is deeply grateful to the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship for their generous support, which will help bring her closer to completing her dissertation.

Indiana Garcia, a former Fulbright scholar from Nicaragua, pursuing a Ph.D. in public affairs at the University of Missouri, focusing on immigration policy and qualitative research methods. With nearly two decades of nonprofit experience, I have witnessed firsthand migration’s profound effects on sending and receiving communities. As a migrant myself, I am deeply committed to giving a humanitarian face to policy by conveying the needs and aspirations of both migrants and host societies. My research, supported by the APSA 2024 Fund for Latino Scholarship, explores why migrants increasingly choose nontraditional destinations like Missouri and examines the policies and conditions that influence these choices. This grant will allow me to present my findings at academic conferences and conduct further interviews, deepening my understanding of migration patterns. I aim to bridge policy and human experience, offering valuable insights to inform effective strategies for accommodating newcomers and addressing their needs in their new and original communities.

Hope Martinez is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Doctoral Program in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University. Her primary research focuses on U.S. Indigenous law and politics with a broad interest in judicial politics, quantitative text analysis, and the effects of colonialism. Hope’s dissertation will identify the mechanisms states use to limit Native sovereignty in Indigenous law cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. She will leverage her dissertation work to provide knowledge to Tribal leaders and advocates of Indigenous protection to support their success against colonial efforts. From her experiences as a single mother to an Afro-Indigenous child, Hope developed a secondary line of research focusing on the decolonization of Indigenous mindsets and the restoration of Native culture. She plans to use the Latino scholarship to fund a survey analyzing colonial mentality within Indigenous communities. Hope earned her BS degree from the University of South Florida, an MS degree from the University of Central Florida, and her MA from Georgia State University. After graduate school, Hope plans to pursue an academic career and create research on Indigenous law and politics while contributing to the liberation of Indigenous and people of color living in colonial structures.

Robert Martinez is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at the University of Notre Dame who also holds an M.A. from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Broadly focused on race and ethnicity, his research centers on political participation, immigration politics, and political power. Additionally, he is interested in the limitations and advancement of survey research among racial and ethnic minorities. His dissertation examines how experiences with racialized discrimination impact the political participation and ideology of Latinos in the contemporary United States. He uses a mixed-methods approach to his research, pairing quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews. With the support of the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship, Robert will expand his qualitative work and collect in-depth interviews with Latinos in the Southwest.

Yulenni Venegas-Lopez is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington where she also serves as the Graduate Assistant for the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR) and Director of the POLS/JSIS/LSJ/GWSS Writing Center. Yulenni’s research centers Latino identity and how Latinidad’s intersections across gender, race, and immigration status influence Latino’s engagement with political institutions. Prior to graduate school, she worked to help migrants get access to legal resources, battle workplace abuses, and in electoral campaigns. The Fund for Latino Scholarship will support both her attendance in the 2024 APSA Annual Meeting and in data collection of her dissertation project, which examines Latino Republicanism by studying Latino Republican candidates. She seeks to understand what vision of Latinidad these candidates represent and interrogates the role gender plays in influencing Latino Republican’s views of Latinidad, immigration, and what they present as an alternate path of Latino political empowerment via the Republican party.