Lee Ann Fujii Best Article Award Co-Winners 2025: Phillip Johnson and Shauna Gillooly (2023); and Martha Balaguera (2022)

Shauna Gillooly

Martha Balaguera

Co-Winner: Phillip Johnson (Flinders University) and Shauna Gillooly (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) (2023), for “Grammar of Threat: Governance and Order in Public Threats by Criminal Actors.” Comparative Political Studies, 56(10), 1567-1596.

In this groundbreaking article, Johnson and Gillooly expertly typologize how criminal groups in Mexico and Colombia shape political order through public and violent messages. In doing so, the authors offer a new lexicon for our understanding of how violent non-state armed groups engage in rhetorical campaigns and meaning-making. In this regard, their work explicitly builds on the late work of Lee Ann Fujii and her pathbreaking research on the performance of violence and how individuals and communities are shaped by these spectacles.

Co-Winner: Martha Balaguera (University of Toronto Mississauga) (2022), for “Trans-asylum: sanctioning vulnerability and gender identity across the frontier.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46(9), 1791–1811.

Balaguera’s article captivated the committee on multiple levels. First, her long-term ethnographic fieldwork with several trans migrants entailed continuous self-reflection and commitment to an ethic of care. Second, Balaguera develops the concept of “legal violence”, documenting the ways in which systems allegedly created for protecting vulnerable populations often end up doing violence to those communities. Finally, the attention to the agency of her interlocutors in variously choosing to migrate, stay, and even refuse to conform to the standards imposed upon them was one of the many highlights of the article. In sum, Balaguera’s work reminded the committee of Lee Ann Fujii’s research, which similarly sought to reveal the often-hidden micro-politics of violence.

Committee Members:

Ed Schatz (University of Toronto)

Lama Mourad (Carleton University)

Nicholas Barnes (University of St. Andrews)

Philip Johnson