APSA Spotlight Scholar: Mazie Bernard
Purdue Political Science graduate student Mazie Bernard was selected by the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Interpretive Methodologies and Methods (IMM) group as an IMM Spotlight Scholar for the 2025–2026 academic year. The Spotlight Scholars program recognizes three outstanding early-career scholars each year whose work showcases or advances interpretive approaches to the study of politics.
During their tenure, each Spotlight Scholar is paired with a more senior interpretivist scholar who provides mentorship. APSA matches early-career scholars with senior scholars who share similar substantive or methodological interests and provides a platform to showcase outstanding research. Spotlight Scholars also participate in an online event organized by IMM each spring, where they receive feedback from members of the interpretive methods community.
Ms. Bernard's dissertation, Ideas and Expertise in Global Economic Governance: Gendered Knowledge Creation, Integration, and Contestation, examines how new economic ideas are created, integrated, and transformed in global economic governance. She conceptualizes three forms of ideational conflict and change—emergence, adaptation, and rejection—among international organizations (IOs) and examines the role of expert staff in institutionalizing gendered economic ideas.
Bernard focuses specifically on gender experts, who wield significant power and authority in global governance and policymaking. Despite recent scholarship on epistemic practices associated with gender experts, the literature has only recently begun to explain variation in when, why, and what types of gendered ideas become embedded in global economic governance (Gerard 2023; Scott and Olivius 2023; Weaver 2010).
Her theoretical intervention synthesizes insights from research on ideas and expertise in global governance, the epistemic power of international organizations, and feminist international political economy (IPE) to explain how different types of ideas about gender and economic development are produced and become influential in global policymaking.