GVPT Professors Isabella Alcañiz and Sarah Croco have been awarded CDCE faculty fellowships for the 2020-2021 academic year for their research on civic engagement.
Dr. Isabella Alcañiz
Dr. Isabella Alcañiz is an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair of the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (UMD). Professor Alcañiz studies the politics
of climate change, social inequality, disaster policy, and gender with a focus on Latin America and Latinx residents of the United States. Her research has been published in Global Environmental Politics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Water Policy, Environmental Science & Policy, World Politics, and the Latin American Research Review. Her book, Environmental and Nuclear Networks in the Global South: How Skills Shape International Cooperation, was published by Cambridge University Press. She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a Licenciatura in International Relations from the Universidad de Belgrano (Argentina).
Project: It Takes a Village: Immigrants and Social Networks during the COVID-19 Crisis
Immigrants who do not meet federal relief criteria are a socially and economically vulnerable group that is unprotected from federal and state government in public health emergencies. Immigrant social networks are vital to reduce health and economic risks in the current COVID- 19 pandemic. This research studies vulnerable immigrant peer-network responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the larger Washington DC metropolitan area (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia or DMV). The project will document and explain how the social networks of recent
immigrants in the DMV area substitute as a source of local and national government and public health. Study findings will carry normative implications for the civic and political engagement of
noncitizen immigrants.
Dr. Sarah Croco
Sarah Croco is an associate professor in the Department of Government and Politics and a faculty associate at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland. She is also the Political Methodology field chair and the Kekst Family Endowed Research Fellow for the 2020-2021 academic year. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan in 2008. Her research interests include: the process by which citizens assign leaders responsibility for international wars; the value of policy consistency in elections; and the consequences for leaders when they lie.
Her book is Peace at What Price?: Leader Culpablity, Domestic Politics, and War Termination. Her dissertation won the 2009 Best Dissertation Prize from the Committee for the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy. She has also won numerous teaching awards. Her work has appeared in The American Political Science Review, The American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and World Politics, among others.
Project:
The centerpiece of the class (GVPT 429A) is a pair of surveys that the students and I designed together. We will have the surveys in the field before and after the election. The questions would center on issues we discuss in class, with a particular emphasis on the role of democratic norms. Putting the survey in the field multiple times will allow us to see how Americans’ feelings about the robustness of democratic norms changes as the country moves through an election. Do people lose faith in democracy if their candidate loses? When do people believe rumors that an election was unfair? How do election outcomes shape citizens’ confidence in institutions?
