Political Science faculty have received several grants and awards for research from National Science Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ford Foundation, U.S. Agency for International Development, Kentucky Development, and US Institute for Peace to name a few.

Grant Awards

Faculty: Justin Wedeking and Mike Zilis

Grant: National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences

Project Title: "Portrayals and Perceptions of the Supreme Court in a New Media Landscape"

Funding: $275,000

Duration: May 15, 2019-April 30, 2023

The media landscape has changed considerably over the last few decades. This project provides the first large scale investigation of Supreme Court media coverage across thousands of news outlets and explores the implications when it comes to support for the Court and the rule of law. The project consists of three main components. First, the project develops a web application that allows for the automated collection of Supreme Court news coverage from a wide variety of mainstream and non-traditional news sources online, in real time. The project will make text data from the application publicly available in a user-friendly format, so that scholars will be able to search and refine coverage based on dates, keywords, and sources, among other features. Second, the project develops a theoretical framework for understanding the most important features of coverage in a new media landscape. The framework highlights differences in the frames, tone, and complexity of coverage across mainstream and non-traditional outlets, specifically as they apply to Supreme Court news. The insights are tested by leveraging multiple text analysis tools and applying them to the coverage corpus. Third, the project explores the effects of both the content of coverage and media fragmentation more generally. The theoretical framework highlights the content and number of choices as two key aspects of the new media landscape.

Previous Grant Recipients

Faculty: Jillienne Haglund
Grant: National Science Foundation
Project Title: "Collaborative Research: Examining Compliance with Rights Regimes"
Funding: $110,354
Duration: August 1st, 2018-July 31st, 2021
Dr. Jillienne Haglund was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation in the amount of $110,354 to study state compliance with international human rights rulings and recommendations on women's rights issues.
Through her research, Dr. Haglund will create and disseminate a new dataset on women’s rights recommendations, the Women’s Rights Recommendation Digital Database, which will be used for a battery of statistical tests to identify the factors that affect compliance with international women’s rights recommendations. The database, statistical analyses, interviews, and case studies will provide insight into the macro-level factors that impact the effectiveness of women’s rights institutions and the processes behind compliance with international women’s rights recommendations.
 

Faculty: Kirk Randazzo & Richard Waterman
Grant: NSF
Funding: 68,795.00
Grant starts 09/01/2007 and ends 08/31/2008

Kirk Randazzo and Rick Waterman received a grant from the National Science Foundation in the amount of $68,795 to study the effects of statutory constraint on judicial behavior in federal and state courts. Their previous research demonstrates that judges decide cases according to their individual ideological preferences, contingent on the level of discretion afforded by the law. Therefore, legislatures (either Congress or state legislatures) can pass detailed statutes which significantly constrain behavior or they can pass vague statutes which provide increased discretion to judges. The financial support from the NSF will continue their research at the state and federal levels.

Faculty: Richard Fording
Funding: $60,000
January 2005-December 2006
“Putting Sanctions into Practice: Devolution, Privatization, and Caseworker Discretion in the Florida TANF Program,” with Sanford Schram and Joe Soss. Annie E. Casey Foundation (Grant # 205.0059). Awarded to conduct field research in Florida one-stop centers, in support of larger project on sanction implementation.

Faculty: Mark Peffley
Funding: $14,448.00
March 2008-August 2008
“Testing the Public's Responsiveness to News about Changes in Welfare Policy.” Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (Competitive award funded through University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, Internal Grants Program).