APSA is pleased to announce the members of the 2026-2027 Class of the APSA-Sponsored Fellows!

The American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Program is a highly selective, nonpartisan program devoted to expanding knowledge and awareness of Congress. Since 1953, it has brought select political scientists, journalists, federal employees, health specialists, and other professionals to Capitol Hill to experience Congress at work through fellowship placements on congressional staffs.

HANNA BRANT

Hanna Brant is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo. Prior to joining the faculty at Geneseo in 2020, she earned a PhD in political science from the University of Missouri with concentrations in American politics and public administration. Her primary area of research and teaching is American politics, with a particular focus on legislative institutions and women in politics. Hanna’s research examines the contours of political careers of members of Congress, state legislators, and legislative staff. Her current book project evaluates the career dynamics of queer women in legislatures. Her work has been published in Congress & the Presidency, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Politics & Gender, and the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. Hanna is a 2025 inaugural Recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Horizon Award for faculty research and scholarship which honors early career faculty whose scholarship has already achieved significant recognition and holds promise for field-defining impact in the future. She has a BS from Indiana State University in political science with minors in women’s studies and civic leadership.

SONJA CASTAÑEDA DOWER

Sonja Castañeda Dower will complete her PhD in political science at the University of Chicago in summer 2026. Her dissertation examines how institutional design conditions political participation, legislative accountability, and the delegation of policy authority. Sonja studies Indigenous institutions as they have evolved alongside and within democratic governance, attending to polities that complicate, constrain, and at times remake the systems built to contain them. Her approach combines quasi-experimental designs with fieldwork, drawing on administrative, archival, and survey data. Her research appears in the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy (2024), with two forthcoming peer-reviewed chapters, one on Indigenous authority in Alaska and Greenland and another on teaching Indigenous politics. Ongoing work supported by the William A. Steiger Fund for Legislative Studies traces how past and present congressional choices shape contemporary contests over land, resources, and intergovernmental authority. She has also received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, and the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts. Before attending UChicago, Sonja earned her BA in English literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her MA in politics and education from Columbia University, and she worked as a university administrator, grant writer, and education policy evaluator.

DEVIN FERNANDES

Devin Fernandes is a political scientist whose research focuses on interest group advocacy, immigration and racial politics, and public policy. He is currently working on a project on the rise of foundation-funded advocacy organizations in the 1960s and how they shaped the coalitional politics of the American left. His work has appeared in the Review of Policy Research and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. He has taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and California State University, Chico. Fernandes holds a PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in public policy analysis from Pomona College and brings additional experience working on immigration and education policy issues for think tanks and advocacy organizations.

SARAH HAYES

Sarah Hayes will receive her PhD in government from Georgetown University in August 2026. Sarah’s work falls under American politics, broadly focusing on the intersection of identity politics, mass political behavior, and public policy. In her dissertation, Sarah investigates how marginalized groups, particularly Black women, engage with social safety net programs; revealing how lived experiences reshape conventional theories of policy feedback and public opinion. Through a mixed methods approach (surveys, experiments, focus groups) and intersectional theoretical frameworks, her research agenda challenges assumptions about representation and political responsiveness. Her broader research has appeared in academic journals such as The Forum and The Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, as well as news publications like The Washington Post. Hayes is also a co-author of Party at the Ballot Box (New York University Press, 2025). Before joining Georgetown, Sarah received her MA in political science from the University of California, Riverside, and received her BA in psychology from the California State University, Fresno.

DANIEL T. KIRSCH

Daniel T. Kirsch completed his doctoral dissertation on campaign messaging and rhetoric based on archival research into statewide electoral campaigns. His later research, utilizing interpretive methods, focused on the politics and policy of student debt. His work on teaching research methods to undergraduate students has been cited by the Interpretive Methods and Methodology Conference-Related Group of APSA. His current projects utilize ethnography and auto-ethnography to critically interrogate both the role of AI in the classroom and the impact of austerity on civic culture in governmental capitals. In addition to his research, Daniel has won teaching awards, been quoted and interviewed by several media outlets, and served in leadership positions for higher education professional associations. He is currently engaged in community-based efforts to support public media. Daniel holds a PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and now serves as Professor of political science at Northern Virginia Community College. His work has been published by Praeger Books (now Bloomsbury), Edward Elgar Books, and the University of Pennsylvania Press.

JESSIE MUNSON

Jessie Munson will be joining the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program with a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on American political institutions, especially the US Congress, and examines how institutional, partisan, and electoral incentives shape legislative behavior and representation. Situated at the intersection of legislative studies and political communication, this work explores how legislators explain and justify their actions, communicate their priorities to constituents, and shape public understanding of political institutions. Her dissertation examines why senators communicate publicly about filibustering and how lawmakers use those messages to claim credit, assign blame, and advocate for institutional change. More broadly, she studies how legislators communicate their priorities and representational activities across a variety of contexts. Her current work examines whether lawmakers’ public messages reflect their behind-the-scenes activities and how political rhetoric spreads between state and federal legislators. She earned her BA in political science from Montana State University. Prior to graduate school, she interned with the UK Parliament’s Petitions Committee and served as a committee assistant in the Washington State Legislature.

ELIZABETH G. PFEFFER

Elizabeth G. Pfeffer holds a DPhil in politics from the University of Oxford and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Her research and teaching center on public policy and political economy with a special focus on the justice system and welfare state institutions in the US and comparative contexts. Her dissertation specifically asked how citizens and policymakers consider electoral tradeoffs between punishment, rehabilitation and social welfare, and how such priorities lead to variation in state punitiveness. At Dartmouth, she also serves as Manager of the Class of 1964 Policy Research Shop, which connects undergraduate researchers with local state government actors, including the New Hampshire Supreme Court, to answer pressing policy questions. Her ongoing research considers the exercise of state capacity in law and policy alike, and from 2024-2025, she was one of the inaugural scholars for the American Bar Foundation’s Access to Justice Research Initiative Early Career Workshop. Elizabeth holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MPhil from the University of Oxford. From 2021-2023, she was a Postgraduate Associate with the Leitner Program on Effective Democratic Governance at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.