This year, two of the three graduate research fellowships awarded by the Social Science Research Council hailed from the University of Michigan.
Margarita Maria Rodriguez Morales (PhD candidate in public policy and sociology) received the Charles E. Lindblom Memorial Fellowship for her research on poverty governance in Colombia. Fadilat Olasupo (PhD candidate in sociology) received the William H. Janeway Fellowship. Both these projects received extraordinary scores from the selection committee out of 120 submissions. An additional graduate research fellowship was awarded to Stanford University student Rachel Herring.
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, The Algorithmic Pandora's Box: Technologies for Poverty Targeting in Colombia," 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.
Fadilat Olasupo's research, "Deportability and Blackness: Racialized Immigration Enforcement in the US," examines how Black immigrants interpret and navigate encounters with policing, criminalization, and immigration enforcement. 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.
Learn more about the SSRC Graduate Research Fellowships
Awarded annually, the prestigious scholarships provide three graduate students with $7,500 in research grants for interdisciplinary social science projects.
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.
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.
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.
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