STEM Shoutout: Dr. Kathy Powers

Political science professor mentors people and sends students to Germany

Dr. Kathy Powers received an NSF grant in 2015 with Dr. Christian Davenport from the University of Michigan to support African-American students and faculty on the path to Ph.Ds and tenure positions in political science. Powers is the first tenured African-American woman in the United States in quantitative international relations.

In addition, Powers worked with Dr. Kristina Yu, also from UNM, to establish a college course “focused on how architecture and planning can be instruments of state repression as well as important tools for post conflict reconstruction in the aftermath of war and human rights violations,” Powers said.

The pair received backing to bring UNM students to Berlin, Germany to study “The Architecture of Justice,” as the course name says.

Powers is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, along with appointments in the Program of Africana Studies and the UnM School of Law. She is currently writing a book called “Making Amends: The New Politics of Global Reparations,” which she is working on under a research fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.