Former Undergraduate Dahl Fellows

Katherine Berman, Dahl Scholar 2018 - 2019
As a Dahl Scholar, Katharine Berman worked with Assistant Professor of Political Science Kate Baldwin on the influence of religion on climate policy debates. Kat is a political science major in the Yale Class 2020. Her independent project asks “under what conditions do religious organizations advocate for the environment?” and she hopes to address how different theologies and different environmental or geographic differences connect to environmental advocacy.

Rachel Diaz, Dahl Scholar, 2019 - 2020
As a Dahl Scholar, Rachel Diaz conducted research with Zack Cooper, the director of Health Policy at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Her research mainly focused on claims analysis in the ambulance services industry to determine how ambulance provider ownership impacts billing practices and provider behavior. Rachel hopes to offer a window into the pricing of sectors with inelastic demand, and seeks to better understand whether market forces are applicable to a sector as quintessential as the U.S. ambulance industry.

Paola Jimenez-Read,  Dahl Scholar, 2020-2021
As a Dahl Scholar, Paola Jimenez-Read worked with Professor Christina Kinane, a resident fellow of the ISPS. Her research project focuses on the inclusivity of LGBTQ+ identities within sexual education policy and curricula at the state level. Through her research, she wishes to support LGBTQ+ advocacy efforts that push for comprehensive and inclusive sex ed. Paola is a Yale undergrad in the Class of 2022 majoring in Political Science.

William McGrew,  Dahl Scholar, 2015 - 2016

As a Dahl Scholar, Will McGrew helped ISPS Director Jacob Hacker with the research, sourcing, and editing for his book American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper.  He also completed an independent research project on the effects of social segregation by gender in American colleges on intergroup biases, rates of sexual violence on campus, and professional disparities after graduation. 

Sarah Merchant, Dahl Scholar, 2016 - 2017
As a Dahl Scholar, Sarah Merchant worked with ISPS Director Jacob Hacker and built off of the research she did for her thesis where she studied the Black-white wealth gap in the US over time and looked at how the gap was affected by the 2008 housing crisis.  She then extended this national analysis to the state-level by looking at the racial differences in foreclosures in Connecticut and describing the role of racial differences in high-cost loans in creating racial disparities in foreclosures.

Hovik Minasayn, Dahl Scholar, 2020- 2021

As a Dahl Scholar, Hovik Minasyan worked with Professor Ian Shapiro to see if changes in tangible economic indicators such as disposable income, unemployment, and rent costs lead to higher rates of voting for populists during Congressional and Presidential primaries in the United States. 

Margeret Moor, Dahl Scholar, 2017 - 2018
As a Dahl Scholar, Maggie Moor worked with Professor Alexander Coppock on a meta-analysis of the list experiment survey method. Their work is in the process of being published (link to most recent draft here). 
 
Maxime Pradier, Dahl Scholar, 2017 - 2018
As a Dahl Scholar, Maxime Pradier’s project aimed at determining whether local economic contexts have an impact on the local enrollment rate of a federal assistance program seeking to support unemployed disabled people. 
 
Akhil Rajan, Dahl Scholar, 2018 - 2019

As a Dahl Scholar, Akhil Rajan worked with Assistant Professor of Political Science Fredrik Savje on a project developing an institutional design for fair redistricting. Akhil was a Ethics, Politics and Economics major. He was also a Human Rights Scholar at Yale Law School’s Schell Center. He is interested in empirical democratic theory, especially applications in redistricting and voting behavior.

Andrew Sorota, Dahl Scholar, 2020-21

As a Dahl Scholar, Andrew Sorota worked with Professor Jennifer Richeson on a project about collective responses to increasing national diversity. Specifically, his research examines the relationship between racial demographic shifts and democratic precarity in the United States, looking at how support for democracy may fluctuate among White populations. Andrew is interested in the nexus of political thought and affect theory.

Baji TumendemberelDahl Scholar, 2019 - 2020
Baji’s project as a Dahl Scholar focused on the implications of prison privatization. More specifically, he conducted a review of contracts made between private prison contractors and state governments in order to see the legal framework of liability and responsibility that is drawn up between the state and the free market.  

Benjamin Waldman, Dahl Scholar, 2017-2018
As a Dahl Scholar, Benjamin Waldman worked under the guidance of Professor Stephen Skowronek, investigating the theoretical and institutional construction of the administrative state during the New Deal. His research was mainly archival, conducted at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Liana Wang, Dahl Scholar, 2019 - 2020

Liana Wang is conducting research with the advising of Professor of Economics Costas Meghir on how the U.S. tax and welfare system affects income inequality on a national scale. Her project focuses on how measures of inequality shift by imputing national and state taxes and transfers using data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey from 1977 to the present.

Zach Young, Dahl Scholar, 2015-2016

As a Dahl Scholar, Zach Young worked with Professor Alan Gerber exploring the implications of institutional federalism on the transparency of the democratic process. His finding were that federalism can obfuscate accountability for public officials, but also limit jurisdictional mismatches in policy-making.

Michael Zanger-Tishler, Dahl Scholar, 2016-2017

As a Dahl Fellow, Michael Zanger-Tishler coauthored with Professors Vesla Weaver and Andrew Papachristos the paper “A Generation Exposed: Examining the Links between Criminal Offending and Criminal Justice Contact.” The article appeared in an upcoming issue of the Russell Sage Foundation Journal, a peer-reviewed social science journal.