Meet the 2026–2027 Graduate Research Fellows

2026–2027 CHARLES E. LINDBLOM MEMORIAL FELLOW

PhD candidate in Public Policy and Sociology, University of Michigan

Margarita Maria Rodriguez Morales’s research interests focus on the impact of technological systems on welfare bureaucrats’ diverse knowledges, decision-making, and everyday practices. Her dissertation explores the use of algorithmic technologies in Latin American welfare policymaking and their impacts on how states relate to their poorest citizens. Through a multi-sited bureaucratic ethnography of Colombia’s algorithmic poverty-scoring system, Margarita Maria examines how the materialities and practices of these technologies shape poverty governance, influencing how bureaucrats and experts define and address poverty, and how citizens experience it.

The Lindblom Memorial Fellowship honors the name and legacy of Charles E. Lindblom (1917–2018), Sterling Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University, and is made possible by a generous donation from Dr. T.Y. Shen, a former SSRC fellow.

2026–2027 WILLIAM H. JANEWAY FELLOW

PhD candidate in Sociology, University of Michigan

Fadilat Olasupo’s research examines how Black immigrants interpret and navigate encounters with policing, criminalization, and immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on interviews with Nigerian and Jamaican immigrants in New York City, alongside legal advocates and community organizers, her dissertation develops the concept of “deportable Blackness” to theorize how racialized enforcement renders Black immigrants presumptively criminal and removable regardless of legal status, and evaluates how advocacy organizations contest these inequalities. Her dissertation research is also supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and Arizona State University. She is also a student researcher with the Carceral State Project at the University of Michigan, where she contributes to research on juvenile life without parole in the state of Michigan and misconduct in the criminal legal system.

The William H. Janeway Fellowship honors Dr. Janeway’s years of dedicated service as a member and chair of the Board of Directors and his leadership as interim co-president from 2025–2026. It is awarded in support of emerging scholars whose work demonstrates intellectual ambition, innovation, and engagement with questions of broad public significance.

2026–2027 WALTER W. POWELL FELLOW

PhD Candidate in Environment & Resources (E-IPER), Stanford University

Rachel Herring investigates how to disrupt extractive capitalism and neoliberal sustainability strategies through decolonial approaches to energy. She employs ethnographic methods to investigate how energy infrastructures reflect and reproduce systems of power, and how infrastructure may instead serve as a tool of self-determination. Previously, she has recommended policy alternatives for domestic mining with the Department of Energy’s Indian Energy Program, and has explored impacts of critical mineral extraction on Native land as a Kathryn Wasserman Davis Conflict Transformation Fellow. As a Fulbright Fellow and National Geographic Explorer, Rachel explored the intersection between renewable energy development and the depopulation crisis in rural Japan. Rachel’s journalism has appeared in Jacobin and the New York Times.

The Walter W. Powell Fellowship honors Powell’s years of dedication to the Council — a member of the Board of Directors since 2000, chair of the Board and the Executive Committee, and interim co-president. It is awarded in support of emerging scholars whose work reflects excellence in social scientific inquiry, interdisciplinary collaboration, and public purpose.