Democracy Initiative awards 40 Democracy Catalyst Grants to projects across campus

The University of Notre Dame’s Democracy Initiative has announced a new round of multi-year investments that will 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:

Convenings

• Jaimie Bleck, an 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 Lamin Keita, a postdoctoral research associate at the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

• Dan Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program and a professor of the practice in the Department of History, will lead a convening titled “Everyday Democracy: Catholic Social Tradition and Community Organizing.” Graff will partner with four team members from the Institute for Social Concerns: Suzanne Shanahan, Mike Hebbeler, Suzanne Mulligan, and Ryan Juskus.
• 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.”
• Jennifer Mason McAward, director of the Klau Institute for Civil & Human Rights and an associate professor of law, will lead a two-day conference titled “Dignity, Democracy and Human Rights Education.” Joining her in this effort will be Klau Institute Associate Director Arlene F. Montevecchio.
• Thomas Mustillo, an associate professor of global affairs, 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.
• Ian Newman, an associate professor in the Department of English, will lead a conference of international scholars focused on “Rethinking Democracy.”
• Adem Osmani, a Notre Dame law student, will lead a Journal of Legislation symposium on “The Regulation of Social Media,” supported by the law student staff of the journal.
• Emma Planinc, an 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.
• Victoria Basulto, a doctoral student in the Department of History, will lead the Democracy in Mexico Speaker Series, with support from Jaime Pensado, an associate professor of History, and León Heitler Ladrón de Guevara, a fellow graduate student in the Department of History.
• Michael Rea, the Rev. John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Philosophy of Religion, will lead the Conference on Religion and Democracy. Laura Callahan, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, is co-organizing the event.
• Victoria Hui, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, will lead a workshop series titled “Democracy Defenders in Exile.”
• Margaret Pfeil, a teaching professor in the Department of Theology and the Institute for Social Concerns, will lead a conference called “Signs of the Times: Interdisciplinary Responses to Religious Nationalism.” Pfeil will work with co-organizer David A. Clairmont, an associate professor in the Department of Theology.

Education and Formation

• Luis Fraga, the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C, Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership; the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science; and director of the Institute for Latino Studies; will lead an interdisciplinary Race and Democracy Working Group with Mark A. Sanders, a professor of English and Africana Studies, chair of the Department of Africana Studies, and director of the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience.
• 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.
• Arlene Montevecchio, associate director of the Klau Institute, received funding to support the student group ND Votes.
• Liang Cai, associate professor in the Department of History, will develop a course titled Utopia and Democracy.

Research

• Ann Mische, an 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 Zhemin Huang, doctoral students in the Department of Sociology.
• Kraig Beyerlein, an associate professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, will lead a project called “Sermons in the Windy City: An Analysis of Religious Messages’ Political Content Across Urban Space.”
• Fabian Diaz Maldonado, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, received funding for his research on “Social Movement Framing, Alliances, and Partisan Alignment: Gaining Support for Environmental Legislation Across Partisan Lines.”
• 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 graduate student in Economics.
• Laura Gamboa, an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs in the Keough School, will lead a project called “Opposition against Subnational Democratic Erosion.”
• Diego Gómez-Zará, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will lead a project titled “The Voices of Democracy: Stakeholder Impact on Chile’s Constitutional Referendums.” His partner on the project is Thomas Mustillo, associate professor of global affairs.
• Amy Brooke Grauley, a graduate student in the Department of Political Science, received funding for “Survey experiments measuring the effect of bipartisan rhetoric on the American public.” Grauley’s co-principal investigator is Shay Hafner, a fellow political science graduate student.
• Brittany Solomon, the Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Assistant Professor of Administrative Leadership in the Department of Management and Organization at the Mendoza College of Business, will lead a project titled “A Hierarchical Theory of Issue Polarization.” Solomon will work with co-principal investigator Matthew Hall, the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional Studies and director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy.
• Abigail Hemmen, a graduate student in the Department of Political Science, will investigate the question: “In what contexts are American citizens most supportive of compromise?” Hemmen will be joined by co-principal investigator James Kirk, a doctoral student in political science.
• Eileen Hunt, a professor of political science, was awarded funding for her research project “Wollstonecraft, Human Rights & Democracy.”
• Marc S. Jacob, an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs, will lead a project titled “Campaigning for Democracy.” Jacob will be joined by co-principal investigators Thomas Mustillo, an associate professor of global affairs, and Tiffany M. Tang, the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.
• Geoffrey Layman, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, will lead a project titled “Breaking up the Parties: Activists and the Polarization of American Politics.”
• Sarah Edmands Martin, assistant professor of visual communications design in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, will lead a project titled “Beautiful Bureaucracy.”
• Sophia Alexa Ochoa, a bachelor of fine arts candidate in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, will pursue a thesis project, “Awitin Mo Na, Sinta Ko (Sing It Now, My Dear): The Songs of Freedom During Philippine Martial Law.”
• Clare Kilbane, senior learning designer for the McGrath Institute for Church Life, will lead a project exploring “What unique contributions do Catholic schools make to democracy?” Kilbane will partner with three team members from the Institute for Educational Initiatives: Monica Kowalski, Kati Macaluso, and Kevin Baxter.
• Zoltán Búzás, an associate professor of global affairs, will lead a project titled “How do the People’s Republic of China and the United States employ human rights and democracy to criticize each other?”
• Matthew Hall will lead a project focused on “Americans’ understanding of and attitudes toward free speech, including censorship, content moderation, and cancel culture.” Hall will work with co-principal investigator Brittany Solomon.
• Zachary Sell, an assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies, received support for a book project titled “Free States: Slavery and Dispossession in the American Heartland.”
• Clare Bath, a doctoral student in sociology and a Ph.D. fellow at the Kellogg Institute of International Studies, will lead a research project on “Somaliland Civil Society: Overcoming the Constraints of State Non-Recognition.”
• Brian Fogarty, an associate director for Lucy Family Institute who oversees the Center for Social Science Research, will lead “A survey experiment testing the effectiveness of informational interventions to correct election misperceptions.”
• 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.”
• Peitong Jing, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, will examine “Official Nationalism Online: Contemporary Lessons from India and China.”
• Luis Schiumerini, an 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.

Follow the progress of the Democracy Initiative at go.nd.edu/democracy.