Shatema Threadcraft, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, received two awards from the American Political Science Association for her new book The Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2025). The book discusses the phenomenon of Black femicide as well as how Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till Bradley, Clementine Barfield, Barbara Smith, Margaret Prescod, and Toni Morrison have confronted premature Black death and made transformative democratic interventions in response to those deaths. In honor of her latest publication, Dr. Threadcraft received both the 2026 Ralph J. Bunche Award, which honors the best book in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism, and the 2026 Victoria Schuck Award, which honors the best book published on women and politics.
The Labors of Resurrection is Dr. Threadcraft’s second book. Her first monograph, Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body of Politic (Oxford University Press, 2016), won several awards, including honors from the National Women’s Studies Association, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and the American Political Science Association. Before joining Vanderbilt, Dr. Threadcraft previously taught at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Dr. Threadcraft is a graduate of Harvard University, where she majored in biology. She holds a master’s degree in philosophy, policy, and social value from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. Before joining Vanderbilt, Dr. Threadcraft taught at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Lisa Messeri, associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, received the 2025 Gregory Bateson Book Prize from the Society of Cultural Anthropology for her book In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles (Duke University Press, 2024). The award celebrates theoretically rich, ethnographically grounded research that engages the most current thinking across the arts and sciences. Dr. Messeri’s award-winning book is an ethnographic exploration of a community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, tech innovators, and artists that formed in the mid-2010s around the promise — and fantasy — of virtual reality as a cure for societal issues like sexism and racism.
A Yale faculty member since 2017, Dr. Messeri has previously taught at the University of Virginia and and conducted research at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. In addition to In the Land of the Unreal, she is the author of Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds (Duke University Press, 2016).
Dr. Messeri received both her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and her Ph.D. in history, anthropology, and science, technology, and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Fiona Cunningham, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, received the 2026 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize for her debut book Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025). The book presents an examination of China’s distinctive approach to the dilemma of coercing an adversary under the shadow of nuclear war, which relies on substitutes for nuclear threats. Presented annually by Cornell University, the Katzenstein Book Prize recognizes an outstanding first book in international relations, comparative politics, or political economy.
Dr. Cunningham first joined the Penn faculty in 2021, following two years on the faculty of George Washington University. In addition to her primary appointment in political science, she is affiliated with Penn’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Browne Center for International Politics. She has previously conducted research at Harvard University, Stanford University, and Yale University.
Dr. Cunningham received a bachelor’s degree in politics and international relations from the University of New South Wales in Australia and a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Sydney in Australia. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts institute of Technology.