Meet Minority Fellowship Program Recipient Berny Lazareno

The following student was named as 2016-2017 APSA Minority Fellowship Program recipient during the spring 2016 application cycle.

LazarenoBenny-resize207x253-crop568x697Berny Lazareno is currently a graduate student and Eugene Cota-Robles Fellow in the politics department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a BA in political science from California State University, Northridge; and MA in political science with an emphasis in global politics from California State University, Long Beach.  His research fields of interests are political institutions, comparative political economy, urban governance, and neighborhood associations. Berny is currently studying the influence that local political institutional arrangements have on contemporary urban government policy making. His current research project investigates the emergence of formal neighborhood associations that are established by local governments and institutionally link neighborhoods’ access to the policymaking process. He is particularly interested in identifying how neighborhood associations are used to legitimize or delegitimize local government policies and how local community and/or neighborhood identity impacts residents’ experiences with neighborhood associations. Upon completion of his doctorate, Berny plans to teach at a university and produce research that is relevant to both policy analysts and the Academy.

Learn more about the Minority Fellowship Program here.