American Academy of Political and Social Science Announces 2025 Fellowships

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Tom Kecskemethy, Executive Director
The American Academy of Political and Social Science
thomask@upenn.edu

Philadelphia, PA (April 15, 2025) — The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) will welcome six scholars as 2025 fellows this fall. The AAPSS selects a small group of scholars and public intellectuals as fellows each year, recognizing their contributions to social science, public policy, and public discourse. 

“It is a privilege to welcome these six new fellows to the AAPSS,” said AAPSS President Marta Tienda. “In various ways, these scholar-leaders have demonstrated how much social science has to offer: rigorous inquiry into some of our society’s most vexing challenges and evidence that can inform public policy moving forward. We are deeply appreciative of their contributions and very pleased to give them this well-earned recognition.”

Xavier de Souza Briggs is an award-winning social scientist and a trusted voice in both public and private sectors. An expert in inclusive economic growth, the consequences of housing opportunity and spatial segregation, and social change, he has influenced policymakers and philanthropists as well as the general public. Briggs is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Kenneth Boulding Fellow. 

Michael Jones-Correa is a political scientist whose research on political mobilization and civic engagement among Latine immigrants has reoriented understandings of this underrepresented minority and dispelled myths and mischaracterizations of immigrant experiences more generally. Jones-Correa is currently President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Robert A. Dahl Fellow. 

Goodwin Liu is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California who previously served as a professor and associate dean at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. His academic expertise lies in constitutional and education law, and he continues to teach the former as a visiting professor in institutions across the country. Justice Liu will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Roger Wilkins Fellow. 

Sharon Parrott is the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she has worked in varying capacities over the past three decades. Her extensive academic work, testimonies before Congress, and stints at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health and Human Services have substantially influenced federal policy on the alleviation of poverty. Parrott will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow. 

Celeste Watkins-Hayes is internationally recognized for her research on inequality, public policy, and human service institutions, particularly as it pertains to those living with HIV/AIDS. At the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, she is Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy, Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, and a professor of sociology. Watkins-Hayes will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Sara McLanahan Fellow.

James P. Ziliak has lent his expertise in socioeconomic well-being—particularly regarding poverty, food insecurity, and tax policy—to the design of groundbreaking policies like the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit. He is currently Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics and University Research Professor at the University of Kentucky, where he is also founding director of the Center for Poverty Research. Ziliak will be the AAPSS’s 2025 Rebecca Blank Fellow. 

The AAPSS will induct its 2025 fellows at a ceremony in Washington, DC, this October. More information about the AAPSS’s fellows program, including a complete list of past fellows, is available here.

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Established in 1889, the American Academy of Political and Social Science promotes the use of social science in the public domain and in policymaking. Its flagship journal, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, brings together scholars and policymakers from across social science disciplines to address domestic issues, such as civic education and engagement and media and communications policy, and international phenomena, such as democratic backsliding and the criminalization of migration.