Assistant Professor Michael Strawbridge has been award the Best Paper Award from the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for his paper, “This Is How We Do: African American Culture, Political Learning, and Black Democratic Partisanship.” The paper was presented at the 2025 APSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Strawbridge's paper focuses on why Black Americans have maintained such strong support for the Democratic Party across generations. To explain this trend, Strawbridge developed a new theory and measure which captured how Black Americans develop their political identities through everyday experiences with Black social and cultural institutions. 

Strawbridge states that the paper is not yet published, but it is the basis of a larger book project he is currently working on with help from his recent Carnegie fellowship. 

View all the winners on the APSA website.