Founded in 1881, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) created its American Fellowships program in 1888, which makes it the oldest non-institutional source of graduate funding for women in the United States. UW Political Science Ph.D. candidate Erin Adam received this year’s AAUW dissertation fellowship to complete her dissertation. In addition to finishing to write her dissertation, Adam plans on using the fellowship for conducting follow-up interviews and beginning the process of transforming her dissertation into a book manuscript.
Adam’s dissertation project is entitled "Queering Rights? The Marginalizing and Mobilizing Impacts of Rights Episodes in Grassroots LGBTQ, Labor, and Immigrant Coalitions." Her research explores the formation of LGBTQ, labor, and immigrant rights group coalitions in Washington State and Arizona. While these groups have been divided in the past, they began to unite in the 2000s. Relying upon a socio-legal research framework, in-depth interviews, and a series of participant observations, Adam seeks to answer why they began to unite and the extent to which the intersectional coalitions they formed have re-shaped hierarchical power dynamics. The AAUW dissertation fellowship will allow her to focus on completing this project and also to conduct follow-up interviews with advocates involved in the LGBTQ, labor, and immigrant rights movements in Washington and Arizona.
In response to being award the AAUW dissertation award, Adam noted:
I am incredibly grateful and honored to receive this fellowship. This would not have been possible without the support of Professors George Lovell and Michael McCann, who spent countless hours working with me to refine grant proposals in various forms over the last three years. Their assistance and emotional support helped me to persevere throughout arduous fellowship and grant application processes. I’d also like to thank Professor Naomi Murakawa, who wrote one of the letters of recommendation that helped secure this fellowship and who continues to be a source of strength in my academic pursuits.