About
Vanessa Cruz Nichols, PhD, is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society at Indiana University. Cruz Nichols' research aims to re-assess the hypothesis that threat is the main mobilizing catalyst for heightened political participation among Latinos. Cruz Nichols is a two-time Ford Fellow (predoctoral and doctoral) and a recipient of the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant through the National Science Foundation.
Current Work
Dr. Cruz Nichols' immediate plans on the fellowship include submitting her book project's three empirical chapters to political science journals. Also, in order to provide more richness and real-world context to my book project, Cruz Nichols will conduct semi-structured in-depth interviews to shed light on the types of action alerts organizers use. These interviews will consist of 12 immigrant movement organizers based out of four cities, cities with different political contexts involving varying levels of restrictive and integrative immigrant proposals being debated in their states. In her dissertation's survey experiment, Cruz Nichols relied on a set external stimuli focused on particular policy threat and policy opportunity proposals. In a second experiment, she has designed with the support of an NSF dissertation extension grant, all treatments will consist of emotion-induction -- a bottom-up approach -- prompting Latino respondents to reflect on times they perceived immigration policies as threats or opportunities. As opposed to reading about fictional policy vignettes EST the treatment prompts will randomize whether the respondent is asked to recall and write about a time when a policy debate has either made them feel.