Fifteen Kellogg Institute faculty fellows, five doctoral student affiliates, and one Kellogg post-doctoral researcher are among the recipients of new funding from the University of Notre Dame’s Democracy Initiative, which announced the round of multi-year investments on November 21.
The funds were allocated to support research and education projects led by Notre Dame faculty and students and convenings that will bring together prominent democracy scholars from around the world.
These investments were made through the Initiative’s inaugural Democracy Catalyst Fund and support new one-to-three-year projects that closely align with the mission of the Democracy Initiative. The initiative, launched in April 2024, aims to establish Notre Dame as a leader in the study of democracy in the U.S. and worldwide, as a convenor for conversations about and actions to preserve democracy, and as a model for the formation of civically engaged citizens and public servants.
“I am impressed by the vibrant community of democracy scholars at Notre Dame,” said David Campbell, Democracy Initiative director and Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy. “These 40 Democracy Catalyst projects range across the University and include faculty and students at every level who are conducting cutting-edge research, creating new opportunities for students, and convening thought leaders across the disciplines to tackle the biggest issues facing democracy around the world.”
The 40 funded projects center around the initiative's thematic areas of Democracy and Culture, Democratic Institutions, and Democracy and Religion.
They are led by 70 scholars across campus, including historians, data scientists, philosophers, theologians, economists, designers, education researchers, and more. These awards represent faculty in five colleges and schools, including the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Science, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Mendoza College of Business, and Notre Dame Law School. Project leaders also represent a wide array of centers and institutes, including the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society, the McGrath Institute for Church Life, the Institute for Educational Initiatives, the Institute for Social Concerns, and the many international institutes in the Keough School.
Of the 40 funded projects, 24 are research, one dozen are convenings, and four are education and formation projects. More details on each project can be found on the Democracy Catalyst Grant Awards page.
The awarded projects include these by Kellogg-affiliated scholars:
Research
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Ann Mische, associate professor of sociology and peace studies, will lead a project titled “Ensemble Interventions: The Relational Dynamics of Transnational Foresight.” Mische will be joined by co-principal investigators Fabian Diaz Maldonado and Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate Zhemin Huang, doctoral students in the Department of Sociology.
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Taryn Dinkelman, the Loughrey Associate Professor of Economics, will lead a project titled “Schooling, Jobs, Political Attitudes, and Political Actions: New Evidence from Free Primary Education Policies in Africa.” Dinkelman will be joined by co-principal investigator Virna Vidal Menezes, a Kellogg doctoral student affiliate and graduate student in Economics.
- Keough School faculty member Laura Gamboa, assistant professor of democracy and global affairs and a Kellogg faculty fellow, will lead a project called “Opposition against Subnational Democratic Erosion.”
- Keough School faculty member Thomas Mustillo, associate professor of global affairs and a Kellogg faculty fellow, will partner with Diego Gómez-Zará, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering on a project titled “The Voices of Democracy: Stakeholder Impact on Chile’s Constitutional Referendums.”
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Eileen Hunt, professor of political science, was awarded funding for her research project “Wollstonecraft, Human Rights & Democracy.”
- Keough School faculty member Marc S. Jacob, assistant professor of democracy and global affairs and a Kellogg faculty fellow, will lead a project titled “Campaigning for Democracy.” Jacob will be joined by co-principal investigators Thomas Mustillo and Tiffany M. Tang, the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.
- Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate Alejandro González Ruiz, a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science, will research “The Role of Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) in Post-Electoral Conflicts in Latin America.”
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Luis Schiumerini, assistant professor of political science, will lead a project titled “Protection of Civil Liberties and Citizen Support for Democracy in Latin America.” Schiumerini will be joined by co-principal investigator Scott Mainwaring, the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science and a Kellogg faculty fellow.
Convenings
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Jaimie Bleck, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, will organize an edited book conference in London in support of the African Governance Innovations Lab. Bleck will be joined by co-principal investigators Bernard Forjwuor, an assistant professor of Africana Studies and Kellogg faculty fellow, and Lamin Keita, a postdoctoral research associate at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Luca Grillo, professor and chair of the Department of Classics, will lead two interdisciplinary workshops on “Religion, Power, Democracy: The Deep Roots of the Modern Paradigm.”
- Keough School faculty member Thomas Mustillo, associate professor of global affairs and a Kellogg faculty fellow, will lead a convening titled “Building Scholarship to Enable the Future of Computational Democracy Research.” Mustillo will work with co-principal investigator Natalie Meyers, a professor of the practice at the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society.
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Emma Planinc, assistant professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, will host a two-day interdisciplinary gathering titled “Revolutionary Democracy: A Symposium on the Past, Present, and Futures of Democratic Revolution.” Her partner in the project will be Katlyn Carter, an assistant professor in the Department of History.
- Kellogg PhD Fellow Victoria Basulto, a doctoral student in the Department of History, will lead the Democracy in Mexico Speaker Series, with support from Kellogg Faculty Fellow Jaime Pensado, associate professor of history, and Kellogg PhD Fellow León Heitler Ladrón de Guevara, a fellow graduate student in the Department of History.
-
Kellogg Faculty Fellow Victoria Hui, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, will lead a workshop series titled “Democracy Defenders in Exile.”
Education and Formation
- Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate Alejandro González Ruiz, a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science, will develop a new course titled International and Domestic Electoral Observation: Principles, Challenges, and Best Practices.
- Kellogg Faculty Fellow Liang Cai, associate professor in the Department of History, will develop a course titled Utopia and Democracy.
A version of this article originally appeared at strategicframework.nd.edu.