Kohut Research Scholar Program

Samuel Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University. His research interests include interstate signaling in international relations, military coercion, and East Asia security. His research examines the logic of great powers’ use of coercion by focusing on the downstream effects of China’s military, economic, and diplomatic coercion in Taiwan. His dissertation combines insights from the fields of international security and psychology, and argues that failures in coercive diplomacy are a result of communication gaps between senders and receivers of costly signals across the Taiwan strait. As a Kohut Scholar, Samuel will investigate the determinants of Hong Kong’s attitudes toward the sovereignty transfer to China in 1997.

Alejandro J. Ramos is an MPA candidate at Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, where he is also a Brooks Public Policy Scholar. As the founder and director of the Ramos Research Institute, Alejandro specializes in education policy. His work explores the intersection of public policy and educational outcomes, aiming to foster equitable access to quality education. Alejandro's passion for politics and public policy fuels his research and his commitment to public service. As a newly appointed Kohut Scholar at the Roper Center, his project will analyze Hispanic voting trends in U.S. presidential elections, employing the Roper Center archives to deepen insights into survey methodology and public opinion. Alejandro looks forward to contributing to the center's mission of advancing the understanding of public opinion and its impact on democracy.

Rocío Salas-Lewin is a PhD student in Comparative Politics at Cornell University's Department of Government. Her research interests include social movements, electoral behavior, populism, and public opinion in Latin America and beyond. Her current projects explore the interaction between contentious and institutional political participation. She studies why individuals react radically differently –protesting, voting populist, and electorally abstaining– under a representation crisis. She is also interested in the impact of social movements on public opinion and elections. Rocío holds a MSc in Political Science and Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a BA in Sociology from Universidad de Chile.

Georgy K. Tarasenko is a PhD student in Government at Cornell University with a focus on Comparative Politics. His research interests span various fields including political economy, cliometrics, political psychology, and authoritarian politics. He is particularly interested in exploring historical legacies and junctures, the psychology of public opinion in non-democratic regimes, and comparative post-communist development. Georgy applies a diverse range of computational methods of statistics, econometrics and machine learning to survey and field experiments, and to causal inference in qualitative research. As a Kohut Scholar, he is investigating the impact of post-Soviet market reforms in the 1990s on the rise of nationalism and anti-US sentiment in Russia. His research uses archival data from the Roper Center to model subnational estimates of attitudes. Georgy holds a Master's degree in Sociology and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science with a minor in Data Science from HSE University. 

Jacob is a Ph.D. student in the Government Department at Cornell University. Jacob’s research interests broadly center around American politics, emphasizing criminal justice policy, public opinion, and political psychology. He has published his work on public opinion and police officers in the Journal of Criminal Justice. Another project which examines the intersections between religion, racial prejudice, and punitive sentiment toward criminals is currently under review. Jacob’s primary research motivation is understanding the political consequences of rural prison proliferation. In particular, Jacob is interested in how rural prison proliferation has entrenched punitive crime policy in the United States and contributed to the perpetuation of mass incarceration. Jacob enjoys a good book during his free time, playing tennis, and spending time with his wife and daughter.

Genevieve Richards is a junior, majoring in Government and minoring in Information Science. She is interested in the intersection of politics and technology and real-world applications for people. On campus, she is also an officer for the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, a policy analyst for the Roosevelt Institute, and a member of a co-op. In her free time, she enjoys fostering kittens.

Emily is a Ph.D. student in comparative politics in the Department of Government at Cornell. Her research focuses on social movements and gender in Latin America and the US, with a particular focus on framing tactics and intra-movement dynamics. Her Kohut Scholarship project will analyze the evolution of public opinion on gender and reproductive politics in Argentina from the mid-twentieth century to today.

Vincent Mauro is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He studies comparative politics and the politics of inequality. His book project, "Party Systems and Democratic Redistribution," investigates how party systems shape broader paths of social reform, redistribution, and economic inequality in Latin America and beyond. He also has a related project on understanding the political behavior of economic elites, particularly concerning issues such as crime and insecurity, redistribution, and democracy. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Politics and Latin American Research Review. 

Nina is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on public opinion toward different aspects of international economic integration and toward global governance. Prior to starting her PhD studies, Nina has worked at a trade association in Brussels and at the University of Oxford. To read Obermeier's issue brief on "Attitudes Toward the U.S. in Cold War West Germany," click here. 

George is a doctoral student in Development Sociology. His dissertation work focuses on the changing relations of sovereignty that are embodied in three distinct areas: maritime piracy, intellectual property law, and international hazardous waste disposal. George's work for the Kohut Scholarship examined American public opinion about important problems and the effect this had on voter participation. Before graduate school, George worked as a commodities broker and later coordinated annual collection of faculty data for Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.