Student Successes: Late Spring 2023

May 1, 2023
  • Hadia Ahmad (POLS ’23 – Honors) presented her research at the annual Frontiers Exhibition in Stamford. Her paper was titled “Fight or Flight: Examining the Struggles on Nonwhites in Academia”. 
  • Gianella Anyosa’s (POLS ‘23 and BOLD Scholar) documentary, Migrar o Morir, was screened in the Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Center Community Room this past March. 
  • Mariam Vargas (POLS ‘25) was selected as a Rangel Scholar for the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program. 
  • Lily Forand (POLS ’23) fights for food advocacy through USG.  
  • Mason Holland (POLS’23- Honors and USG president) will start graduate school in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan this fall 2023.  
  • Anabelle Bergstrom (POLS ‘25) presented the findings from her Holster Scholar project “Examining the Relationship Between Male and Female ROTC Experiences and Career Ambition” at the Annual Meeting of the New England Political Science Association in Mystic, CT. 
  • Benjamin Stumpf (PhD Candidate) published an article titled “Outside Agitators’ from the Civil Rights Movement to Stop Cop City” in Radical History Review.  
  • Cory Runstedtler (PhD Candidate) presented his paper “Can the Few Replace the Many: Interpreting the New Wave Union-based Collective Action Focused on Smaller Groups” at New England Political Science Association conference. He will also be presenting at The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) 75th Annual Conference in June. 
  • Sercan Canbolat (PhD Candidate) co-authored a paper with Patrick James (USC) and Sarah Gansen (USC) titled “Systemism and International Relations: How a Graphic Method Can Enhance Communication” which is accepted to be published in the International Studies Review (June 2023).  
  • Sercan Canbolat (PhD Candidate) and Stephen Dyson co-authored a paper titled “Dominating the Superpower: A Bounded Rationality Approach to Nuclear Proliferation and Inhibition in the U.S. / North Korea Dyad” which received an R&R (with minor revision) from the Journal of International Relations. 
  • Hoeun Lee (PhD Candidate) has been accepted as an author in a panel session at the 2023 APSA Annual Meeting program in Los Angeles.  
  • Mst. Tahmina Akter (PhD Candidate) has been selected to be the Secretary of the Political Science Graduate Students Association (PSGSA). This year, she also received the J. Garry Clifford Graduate Fellowship Fund, which is given annually to a graduate student who has demonstrated academic excellence. Also, she has been awarded the POLS Teaching Assistant of the Year Award for demonstrating excellence as a TA.  
  • Minju Lee (PhD Candidate) presented her paper “Why Did South Korea and Israel Restore and Rapidly Improve Their Bilateral Relations After a Fourteen Year Hiatus? – The Role of Ontological Security in South Korean-Israeli Relations” at the MPSA Conference in April. She will participate in a panel of Human Rights, Trafficking, and Democratic Quality as a presenter of the paper “Too Dangerous to be Welcomed: Anti-Immigrant/Refugee Movements in Asia” at the annual APSA meeting this August. 
  • Lily Luo (PhD Candidate) recently published her first peer reviewed article titled “Intimacies of the Future: Techno-Orientalism, All-under-Heaven (Tian-Xia天下), and Afrofuturism in Verge: Studies in Global Asias 9:1 (Spring 2023)  
  • Anabelle Bergstrom (POLS & Philosophy ’25, CLAS) won a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund Award for her project “Investigating the Influence of Campaign Contributions on State Supreme Court Judicial Decisions.” Her faculty mentor is Prof. Virginia Hettinger.  
  • Colin Piteo (POLS & History ’24) won a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund Award for his project “Can a Law Really Protect Glaciers? Examining a Visionary Law in Argentina.” His faculty mentor is Prof. Mark Healey. 
  • Spencer Hayes (PhD Candidate) presented her paper “The Internet: A Human Trafficker’s Number One Accomplice?” at the Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago this April.  
  • Bryanna Moore (IIREP ‘23) is the inaugural graduate of Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (IIREP) MA Program. On April 28, 2023, she successfully defended her exemplary MA Project, a paper entitled “Suppressing the Black Vote in Georgia: A Matter of Racial Animus or Electoral Strategy?” Her project is supervised by Prof. Evelyn Simien. Prior to coming to UConn, Bryanna completed her BA in political science from Yale University.  
  • Undergraduate Political Review Journal’s spring 2023 edition can be found here