The APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship’s primary goal is to encourage and support the recruitment, retention, and promotion of political science students and scholars who study and research Latina/o politics (especially students and tenure track junior faculty). Grants for the 2025 cycle were made to those individuals whose purposes most clearly match the goals of the Fund, and whose proposals most persuasively demonstrate capacity for successful completion. Applications for the Fund close annually each June. Learn more about the Fund for Latino Scholarship at https://www.apsanet.org/fls.

REBECA J. AGOSTO ROSA

Rebeca J. Agosto Rosa is a PhD candidate in the political science department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a political psychologist, she is interested in how identity, intergroup contact, and the media influence political attitudes and behavior. Her dissertation examines how Spanish-language content in the media shapes intergroup attitudes in the US, drawing attention to non-political media’s political consequences. The APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship will help her replicate and extend her preliminary findings. Agosto Rosa holds a master’s degree in political science from UIUC and a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

EDUARDO BURKLE

Eduardo Burkle is a PhD student at the University of Georgia. His research interests include human rights, political violence, peacekeeping, and transitional justice. Eduardo is also part of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), where he focuses on measurement questions in political science and works with a team that produces annual data on civil and political rights. The APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship will support data collection for his current research project on how reparations programs from transitional justice efforts influence citizens’ perceptions of victims of human rights violations in Latin America. This project is part of a broader research agenda focused on investigating public opinion and human rights, combining a range of research methodologies, including survey and experimental designs.

JAIME ANDRES CARBAJAL

Jaime Andres Carbajal is a PhD student studying American politics and political methodology in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin. Using experimental methods, his research focuses on public opinion and voting behavior from marginalized groups, such as Latinos, African Americans, and women. Much of Jaime’s work is created using hypothetical candidates, vignettes, and AI-generated photos. With these materials, Jaime analyzes how voters respond to specific candidate characteristics, whether related to physical appearance or political behavior. With the support of the Fund for Latino Scholarship, Jaime plans to continue collecting data on these marginalized groups, expanding his line of research, and sharing his findings at various political science conferences.

RAISA CASTRO-ÁVILA

Raisa Castro-Ávila is a second-year PhD student in political science at Georgia State University, specializing in comparative politics and public law. Her research examines how Latin American courts define and adjudicate rape, with a focus on how victim characteristics and institutional norms shape judicial decision-making. Drawing on an original dataset of Supreme Court rulings from Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, and Costa Rica, her work seeks to understand how legal systems respond to gender-based violence. With support from the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship, Raisa will expand her project to include post-2018 rulings, additional countries, and lower-court decisions. As a Latina originally from Ecuador, she brings both scholarly rigor and personal insight to her research, aiming to contribute to legal reform and amplify the voices of survivors.

ANNABELLA ESPAÑA-NÁJERA

Annabella España-Nájera is professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at California State University, Fresno. Her research examines democracy, authoritarianism, and political institutions in Latin America, with a particular focus on Guatemala and El Salvador. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on party system change, the weaponization of judicial institutions, and gender and representation in local politics. Building on this work, her current project, “Bridging Borders: Central American Immigrants’ Integration in the United States”, explores how migrants participate civically and politically in US communities while maintaining transnational ties to their home countries. España-Nájera’s work has been published in Party Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and Social Science Quarterly, as well as edited volumes on Latin American politics. She is also committed to mentoring undergraduate students, particularly first-generation and Latino students at Fresno State.

MARTÍN GOU

Martín Gou is a PhD candidate in political science at Vanderbilt University specializing in comparative political behavior, with a regional focus on Latin America. His dissertation, “Who Draws the Line? The Interaction Between Horizontal and Vertical Accountability in Democratic Backsliding”, investigates how citizens recognize democratic violations and under what conditions institutional actions trigger public responses. The project combines focus groups, survey experiments, and cross-national comparisons to develop a theory of democratic norm enforcement. As part of this work, Gou will use support from the Fund for Latino Scholarship to conduct structured focus groups in Mexico. These sessions will explore how citizens define democracy, evaluate institutional legitimacy, and interpret ambiguous government actions, providing a crucial foundation for subsequent experimental chapters. Before beginning graduate study, Gou worked in Mexico for public institutions directly engaged in accountability processes, including the National Electoral Institute and the National Anticorruption System. A first-generation student born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, he brings both scholarly and lived experience to the study of democracy and accountability. His long-term commitment is to advance rigorous research that is attentive to citizen perspectives and to contribute to public scholarship in Latin America.

RAYMUNDO LOPEZ

Raymundo Lopez is a PhD candidate in the department of political science at Michigan State University. His research leverages video-as-data from US congressional floor speeches to evaluate how members of Congress negotiate and perform their social identities in real time—when they invoke them, how they describe them, and in what combinations. The Fund for Latino Scholarship will support efforts to launch an online survey experiment in a dedicated chapter of his dissertation. Ray is committed to public scholarship and digital storytelling. He is the founder of Atom Laboratories, a YouTube channel that translates political science research into accessible video essays, candidate profiles, and analyses of contemporary political issues. His work bridges scholarship and practice, with the goal of broadening civic understanding and fostering inclusive political discourse. Lopez is a Stanford University, USC POIR Predoctoral Summer Institute and Ronald McNair alum.

GEIDY MENDEZ

Geidy Mendez (she/her/hers) is a first-generation Guatemalan, born and raised in East Orange, New Jersey. Her family is from Flores Costa Cuca, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. She is currently a PhD candidate in the department of political science at the University of California-Irvine. Her research explores the intertwined relationship between resentment and political behavior in Latin American migrants here in the United States. The Fund for Latino Scholarship supported her attendance in the 2025 APSA Annual Meeting where she presented a chapter of her dissertation.

MELANIE RAE PEREZ

Melanie Rae Perez is a PhD candidate in international relations at Florida International University. Her research examines the intersections of religion, politics, and global justice with a focus on transregionalism and imagined communities. Specifically, she explores the historical and contemporary connections between the Middle East and Latin America, highlighting how religious and diasporic networks shape political solidarities and international relations.

DIANA ALEJANDRA SÁNCHEZ ROMERO

Diana Alejandra Sánchez Romero is an assistant professor at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City and holds a master’s degree in political science from Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). Her research focuses on corruption, elections, and democracy, with a particular interest in the impact of digital tools on community development and democratic governance. Beyond academia, Diana is an organizer of RLadies México, where she explores network analysis and package development while supporting the organization’s mission to promote gender diversity in the R community. The grant awarded by the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship will support the quantitative and qualitative data collection for her project on computational propaganda in the Mexican judicial election.

CAROLINE L. SILVA

Caroline L. Silva is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of international and European law at the University of Amsterdam, and a research fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law. Caroline has joined the ERC-funded project “Beyond Compliance: Rethinking the Effectiveness of Regional Human Rights Regimes” as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2025. She is responsible for conducting research into the institutional effectiveness of the Inter-American System of Human Rights. Caroline’s previous research examined the relationship between domestic and international courts in Latin America. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in national high courts and at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, her previous work investigates how domestic judges gatekeep the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ decisions. Her current book project, “Gatekeepers of the Realm”, examines the role of domestic judges as gatekeepers of international jurisprudence. She also serves as associate editor at Political Research Exchange. Her broader academic interests include international law, international relations, and judicial politics. Before joining UvA, Caroline worked as an assistant professor of International Relations at Diego Portales University, and as a lecturer in Human Rights at Columbia University. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg – The Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study at Georg-August-Universität. She holds a dual PhD, one in international law from the University of Copenhagen and another in international relations from Northwestern University. She also has an LLM from King’s College London and an LLB from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. A licensed lawyer in Brazil, she began her career as a tax consultant before moving into academia.

SONIA VARGAS

Sonia Vargas is a fifth-year PhD student in government and politics at the University of Maryland in American politics, and methodology subfields. Her research centers on immigrant generation, political socialization, and political attitudes, with a dissertation exploring how Latinxs display variation in political attitudes across immigrant generation status. The Fund for Latino Scholarship supported her attendance in the 2025 APSA Annual Meeting and the development of her dissertation project. ■