Political Science in the News
Dr. Nathan Kelly Awarded Prestigious Andrew Carnegie Fellowship for Research on Income Inequality
In keeping with its mission to advance and disseminate knowledge and understanding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York today announced 35 recipients of the 2017 Andrew Carnegie fellowships, with awards totaling $7 million. One of the winners is Associate Professor Nathan Kelly in the Department of Political Science.
The program recognizes an exceptional group of both established and emerging scholars, journalists, and authors with the goal of strengthening U.S. democracy, driving technological and cultural creativity, exploring global connections and global ruptures, and improving both natural and human environments.
The award will allow Kelly substantial time to focus on his ongoing research on the causes and consequences of income concentration. His primary focus during the award period will be completing his book, America's Inequality Trap, which explores the ways that rising inequality shapes American politics in ways that make reducing inequality harder. He will also work on a project focused on the economic policy agenda in Congress and a project examining "Exclusionary Democracy" in the western hemisphere.
Each year as part of the fellows program, the Corporation seeks nominations from more than 600 leaders representing a range of universities, think tanks, publishers, independent scholars, and nonprofit organizations nationwide. For the class of 2017, they nominated some 200 candidates whose proposals were reviewed and rated by one or more of the 33 prominent scholars, educators, and intellectuals.
The jurors were asked to consider the merits of each proposal based on its originality, promise, and potential impact on a particular field of scholarship. This year, 19 men and 16 women, representing 14 public and 21 private institutions, received fellowships.
Kelly is the first UT professor and one of only four SEC political scientists to have received this prestigious award, which is among the most generous awards in the social sciences and humanities. Kelly will be spending the first year of the Carnegie award at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City where he will be a visiting scholar. Receiving both of these awards in the same year is an amazing accomplishment and a testament to the quality and importance of Kelly's work.