Kohut Research Scholar Program

Ariela Asllani is a rising senior in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Having interned at the White House and the U.S. Senate, she hopes to carry forward Andrew Kohut’s legacy by grounding media, policymakers, and the broader community with reliable, high-quality research on public opinion. As a Kohut Scholar, Ariela will examine how federal investments in U.S. border enforcement since the early 2000s influence national sentiment, exploring whether perceived control over the border shapes openness to increased immigration levels.

"As an undergraduate, I initially wasn’t sure what to expect, but the Kohut Research Scholar Program consistently made me feel supported and intellectually challenged — each week’s speaker brought new perspectives that deepened my understanding of public opinion research. The experience bridged my interest in federal government work and academic inquiry, giving me real-world exposure to survey research and data analysis in a way that’s relevant to public policy."

Nikta Khalilkhani is a PhD student in Social and Personality Psychology at Cornell University. Her research explores how shifts in social hierarchies—particularly those perceived by dominant groups—shape intergroup attitudes and behaviors. She focuses on gender dynamics, investigating how perceived threats relate to support for equality and policy change. As a 2025 Kohut Scholar, Nikta will be analyzing archival survey data to better understand how attitude toward workplace sexual harassment have evolved over time. She brings to this work a strong background in both experimental design and large-scale data analysis, with prior projects spanning topics from health disparities to racial and gender-based biases.

"The Roper Center Kohut Fellowship was an incredibly valuable experience that gave me hands-on access to high-quality public opinion data and the chance to learn directly from experts in the field. The weekly meetings were especially meaningful—being able to ask questions, hear about different career paths in public opinion research, and connect with practitioners really expanded my perspective. I came away with new skills, confidence in my research, and a much broader sense of what’s possible in this space."

Thomas Gareau‑Paquette is a PhD student in American Politics at Cornell University’s Department of Government. He studies how today’s knowledge‑driven economy redraws the political cleavages that anchor party competition and shape debates over the welfare state across North America, Western Europe, and other post‑industrial democracies. His research looks at political attitudes toward redistribution and inequality, with a focus on welfare chauvinism, labour‑market precarity, housing‑market pressures, and the diploma divide—and how these forces realign electoral coalitions. As a 2025 Kohut Scholar, Thomas will rely on the monthly Fannie Mae National Housing Survey along with local labour‑market data to track how economic booms widen, or narrow, the homeowner–renter divide in housing‑policy preferences across U.S. metro areas. He holds an MA in Political Science from McGill University and a BSc in Political Science from the Université de Montréal.

"My time as a Kohut Fellow was a fantastic way to turn a research idea I initially wasn’t sure how to pursue into a rigorous public-opinion project drawing on subsets from hundreds of datasets in the Roper archives. The Roper team was incredibly supportive, and the experience strengthened my survey research skills. Writing the blog post also helped me develop strategies to communicate my findings to a broader audience. As fellows, we also had the chance to meet members of the Roper Board, who are outstanding academics and industry thought leaders, which was valuable both for researchers interested in industry opportunities and for academics looking to build new professional relationships. I’d strongly recommend the program to anyone looking to do independent, data-driven research over the summer in a highly supportive environment."

Aaron Childree is a Ph.D. student majoring in American Politics and minoring in Comparative Politics with a special minor in Methodology. His research interests include executive politics, democratic institutions, and the domestic politics of foreign policy. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Arts from Rollins College and a Master of Public Policy from Georgia State University. During his time at Georgia State, he also served as a Public Finance Fellow at the University’s Center for State and Local Finance. Read Aaron's Kohut research piece entitled Public Opinion and the Vietnam War: How Race, Gender, and Partisanship Affect Views Toward Military Conflicts.

Yamile Guibert is a Ph.D. candidate in Government from Cornell University. She holds an MA in Government from the same university. Previously, she received a BA and Licentiate from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP). She is interested in political accountability, corruption, voting behavior, and party politics, with a regional focus in Latin America. 

Joseph Lasky is a PhD student in the Department of Government. He studies comparative politics and specializes in identity, ethnic politics, political violence, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. His current projects focus on how identity shapes engagement with traditional forums of dispute resolution in Benin and the attitudinal and identity legacies of the Hidden War in Cameroon. His Kohut Scholarship project addresses national identity formation in West Africa at the dawn of independence. Read his work here entitled "The Five-Country Survey: Roper’s Collection Offers a Look at West African Attitudes in the 1960s".

Andreas Psahos is a rising junior in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. He currently works on faculty-led research projects exploring the gender-wage gap among young STEM graduates and assessing the economic impact of pandemic-era lockdowns in Latin America and the Caribbean. As a Kohut Scholar, Andreas will study disparities in Internet access in the COVID age, as well as the effectiveness of digital public health messaging across race and class in the United States. Read his work here entitled "Misinformation, Vaccination, and Social Media Use Across the Political Aisle".

Kwelina Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Cornell University. She specializes in U.S. economic history with a particular focus on the influence of technology on work processes and gender stratification. Her research explores the ways in which institutions of higher education, government policies, and professional organizations have transformed labor market outcomes in the post-World War II era. Click here to read her work on women and polling.

 

Colin Cepuran is a Ph.D. candidate in the Government Department of Cornell University, where he studies the role of policy in political attitude and identity formation. His dissertation examines how DACA shaped the political attitudes and racial/ethnic identities of the Dreamers. More broadly, his work sits at the intersection of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, Policy Studies, and American Political Development. Prior to studying at Cornell, he worked in local politics.  He has consulted for multiple local races in Southwestern Michigan and managed a State Representative's re-election campaign. Click here to read his work on the support for fixing undemocratic institutions. 

Bryan Huang is a Cornell junior pursuing a double major in Government and Information Science, with a concentration in Data Science. He is interested in using data-driven research to examine what factors affect public opinion as well as how electoral systems shape political outcomes. His Kohut Scholarship research project explores whether the degree of public concern related to climate change is correlated with the location of natural disasters in the U.S. over the past twenty years.

 

José Sánchez Gómez is a second-year PhD student in the Government Department at Cornell University. His research interest is on comparative politics of Latin America. He focuses on contentious politics and constitutional change, social movements and party politics. In 2015, he finished his Master of Public Administration at CIPA, Cornell. Before coming to Cornell, he served as a public official in the Civil Service Department of Paraguay, and worked for NGOs in programs for social and democratic development. Click here to read his Kohut Scholarship research project, which focuses on economic sentiments and major political changes in Chile between 1966 and 2016.

Claire Liu is a rising junior pursuing a double major in Government and independent study, focused on persuasion and propaganda through the Arts and Sciences College Scholar program, and a minor in French. She is fascinated by topics of modern mass misinformation, campaign messaging and the roles and responsibilities assigned to social networks and corporations by the American public. Click here to read her Kohut Scholarship research project which explores the “fake news” phenomenon in the 2016 presidential election.