SIS PhD Student Steven Bradford has been awarded two fellowships and one grant for his research on the weaponization of food in the Syrian conflict: a Moody Research Grant, Boren Fellowship, and American Political Science Association Diversity Fellowship. Congratulations, Steven!

Moody Research Grant:

The Moody Research Grant will support essential archival research at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, enabling deeper analysis of U.S. foreign policy toward Syria during the Cold War. This research is a continuation of Steven's previous archival work conducted at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which traced the fracturing U.S.–Syria relationship and the concurrent strengthening of Syria’s alliance with the Soviet Union. Together, these Cold War dynamics illuminate how the Assad regime became structurally and diplomatically enfranchised to conduct military strikes against its own unarmed citizenry, including the weaponization of food systems.

Boren Fellowship:

The Boren Fellowship enables intensive Arabic language study and fieldwork in Morocco, a key site of Syrian displacement, providing the linguistic and cultural fluency essential for conducting trauma-informed oral interviews and ethnographic research. This immersion enhances Steven's dissertation on the weaponization of food in the Syrian conflict by allowing direct engagement with displaced Syrians whose culinary adaptations preserve memory, assert agency, and resist erasure. Through this work, the fellowship supports a bottom-up analysis of authoritarian violence and contributes to U.S. national security by deepening expertise on forced migration, regional instability, and humanitarian response in the SWANA region.

American Political Science Association Diversity Fellowship:

Steven was awarded the APSA Diversity Fellowship for the Spring 2025 cycle, which includes a generous financial award and access to a national network of scholars committed to supporting underrepresented voices in political science. This fellowship will help support his research on how authoritarian regimes weaponize food during conflict, focusing on Syria’s use of food deprivation to weaken civilian populations and suppress cultural identity. The fellowship is especially meaningful to Steven as it affirms the importance of studying the lived experiences of marginalized communities and provides critical support and scholarly community to advance research that challenges structural violence in international politics.