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Two UChicago students awarded Carnegie fellowships to conduct research in international affairs

As James C. Gaither Junior Fellows, fourth-years Fiona Brauer and Erica Hogan will work within Carnegie’s programs focused on democracy and Africa, respectively

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank, recently selected fourth-year students Fiona Brauer and Erica Hogan to be a part of the James C. Gaither Junior Fellowship Program

This one-year research fellowship is awarded to approximately 14 students annually, providing high-achieving college graduates with an opportunity to work as research assistants to Carnegie’s senior scholars. 

Brauer will work as a junior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, while Hogan will work as a researcher at Carnegie’s Africa Program. Both will be based in Washington, D.C.

Identifying global threats to democracy

A Law, Letters, and Society major and Democracy Studies minor from San Francisco, Fiona Brauer is particularly interested in the rule of law, and the ways in which it evolves and varies across democracies and non-democracies.

Having developed her political awareness at a time of rising polarization and political conflict in the U.S., she came to UChicago knowing she was broadly interested in government and political institutions. That interest became more focused and clarified after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“The importance and urgency of studying threats to democracy and the eroding trust in democratic institutions was made unmistakably clear on that day,” Brauer said. 

As a research assistant with the UChicago-based Chicago Project on Security and Threats, she worked with the American Political Violence team on a database of participants in the insurrection, analyzing the participants’ demographics as well as the connections between them.

Last summer, Brauer worked with the Democratic Erosion Consortium, a partnership of researchers and students across multiple universities. As a fellow, she contributed to a project updating and expanding a database of events in countries across the globe that signaled possible democratic erosion, from coups to media repression to constitutional changes.

“UChicago has given me the chance to pursue significant and deep research on multiple projects and in collaboration with exceptional faculty and peer researchers, and I will take both the technical and interpersonal skills I learned there with me,” Brauer said. “The unlimited curiosity of people at UChicago both in the classroom and beyond it has created an environment that demonstrates every day how rewarding discussion and collaboration is.”

These experiences have prepared her for the upcoming year in the Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, where she will work mostly with senior fellow Steven Feldstein.

Brauer will contribute to research for books, articles and policy recommendations, and participate in meetings and briefings with Carnegie’s network of activists, scholars, journalists and officials as a junior fellow.

“I am deeply excited to explore issues of democracy and governance with such exceptional scholars and with an aim towards implementation and concrete change,” she said.

In the future, Brauer hopes to attend law school and study legal and constitutional frameworks for civil liberties, both in the U.S. and globally. She ultimately aims to work in a space much like Carnegie or a similar think tank in which “scholar-practitioners” help bridge the divide between research and implementation.

She said she feels grateful for the personal mentorship, encouragement and institutional support that she has received from UChicago, and plans to take full advantage of all of the opportunities ahead of her.

“For me, this award represents the beginning of a commitment to using these resources as seriously as I can, to further Carnegie’s mission both as a junior fellow and beyond,” she said.

Reshaping the U.S.-Africa relationship

Originally from Tokyo, Hogan was raised with one Japanese parent and one American parent. She said she grew up navigating both cultures, switching between frames of understanding and modes of presentation.

These formative experiences helped her shape the question she is studying through her Fundamentals major: “How can we build a better world?”. More specifically, she is interested in the relationship between social institutions and human flourishing, and the different ways in which they shape each other across the world. In addition to Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, she is also majoring in Economics. 

Hogan became particularly interested in Africa’s colonial history and post-colonial development while volunteering as a teaching assistant at an elementary school in Zambia prior to attending UChicago. Living near the border, and often crossing into Zimbabwe, Hogan noticed stark differences between the two countries, despite their very similar pasts. 

In an effort to understand why some African countries have taken such divergent paths in the post-colonial world, Hogan has worked at UChicago as a research assistant to Prof. Raúl Sánchez de la Sierra at the Harris School of Public Policy.

Additionally, as an intern in the U.S. State Department Bureau of African Affairs, she learned about ways in which the U.S. government develops and uses research internally to direct U.S.-Africa foreign policy. 

“I realized that the types of issues policymakers focus on, and the ways in which policymakers try to answer their questions, is quite different from how academics think,” she said. “This led to my interest in the think tank space—I see think tanks as the nexus of academia and government.”

For Hogan, it’s the perfect time to join Carnegie’s Africa program. President Joe Biden’s administration recently launched an effort to reshape the U.S.-Africa relationship, drawing heavily on Carnegie’s advice. Hogan said her work with the Africa program’s leader, Zainab Usman, will involve fast-paced, policy-driven projects.

Ultimately, she hopes to work to reshape the relationship between the U.S. and Africa, and Africa and the West more broadly. 

“I see reshaping this relationship as a matter of justice and necessary to truly end colonial domination,” she said. “In addition, I see building solidarity across the U.S. and Africa as part of a broader project of fostering peace and prosperity both at home and globally.” 

After her year in D.C., Hogan plans to continue to build research experience outside of academic settings and will pursue opportunities in Southern or Francophone Africa before working towards a PhD. 

She said she is honored to receive the fellowship, meet the other fellows, and have the Gaither and broader Carnegie networks at her disposal in the future.

“I am so thankful to have ended up at UChicago,” she said. “There is no better place in the world than UChicago to receive undergraduate training in quantitative social science. My mentors here have taken me seriously as a thinker on social issues and have generously made themselves available to me.”

Hogan and Brauer secured University nomination and received application support from the College Center for Research and Fellowships, which facilitates annual nomination processes and guides candidates through rigorous applications for nationally competitive fellowships. Their undergraduate research experiences were also supported by Collegiate grants, including those provided through the Quad Undergraduate Research Scholars program.