Weatherhead Center awards 60 grants and fellowships

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has announced that it is awarding 60 student grants and fellowships amounting to more than $100,000 for the 2003-04 academic year. Sixteen grants will support Harvard College undergraduates, 28 will support graduate students, and additional awards will be made to undergraduate and graduate student groups for their own projects. In recent years, the Weatherhead Center has increased support for Harvard students significantly, increasing both the financial resources available and the number of student awards, and establishing new programs and seminars for students.

Weatherhead Center Undergraduate Associates:

Sixteen Harvard College juniors received summer travel grants to support senior thesis research on topics related to international affairs. Following their return in September, Undergraduate Associates will be encouraged to take advantage of the resources of the center, and during the spring 2004 semester, the students will present their thesis research in Weatherhead Center seminars that are open to the Harvard community.

The following undergraduates are listed below along with their summer research projects.

Anthony Arnold, a social studies concentrator, will travel to Mexico to study the influence of racial and economic inequality on the development of democracy in Mexico.

Gregory Elinson, a social studies concentrator, will travel to Senegal and Mali to study the Mali Federation – the reasons for its collapse and possible lessons for contemporary Africa.

Kent Lam, a history, science, and East Asian studies concentrator, will travel to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco to examine the ways the Falun Gong, a spiritual and religious group in China, is presented in Western and Eastern literature through an investigation of the reasons the Falun Gong is perceived distinctly by Western human rights organizations, by the Chinese Communist Party, by Western and Chinese psychiatrists, and by Chinese civilians.

Martin Kanz, an economics concentrator, will travel to Geneva, Berlin, and Paris to research the political economy of immigration and will seek to explain differences in European and American immigration policy.

Michal Miaskiewicz, a government concentrator, will travel to Brussels to research the working relationship between the European Parliament and the E.U.’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy by examining policy documents and undertaking interviews.

Swati Mylavarapu, a concentrator in human rights issues in international development, will travel to India to conduct research on why there were riots in Gujarat, and not in Hyderabad, and their impact on national, economic, social, and political development.

Darya Nachinkina, a government concentrator, will travel to England and Russia to analyze the influence of nonelected elites and interest groups on policy-making in post-2000 Russia.

Antonio Pozos, a history concentrator, will travel to Spain to conduct research on Iberio-American relations between 1945 and 1953 from a Spanish perspective.

Ryan Rippel, a social studies concentrator, will travel to Nigeria to conduct research based on interviews of native Igbo on the role an international diaspora has come to play in local efforts to bring about economic and political development.

Ari Shaw, a government concentrator, will travel to England and Spain to assess the role of actors within civil society and judicial institutions in upholding international human rights norms.

Jaclyn Shull, a government concentrator, will travel to New York and Miami to research the history of Cuban inmates in United States prisons who have been locked up indefinitely and are in legal limbo.

Joshua Stenberg, an East Asian studies concentrator, will travel to Siberian Russia to research Chinese migrant assimilation in Khabarovsk through investigation of their organizations and institutions.

Suchanan Tambunlertchai, an economics concentrator, will travel to Senegal to study microcredit and its effects on gender roles and food security in Senegal.

Kristina Vetter, a social studies concentrator, will travel to Germany, France, and Belgium to study the degree to which mobility fosters “Europeanness” among Belgian, French, and German university students.

Ashwini Vasanthakumar, a social studies concentrator, will travel to Toronto to analyze the political activism of refugees toward country of origin and likelihood that such activism leads to greater integration in country of asylum using Tamils in Toronto as a case study.

Sidney R. Knafel Fellow:

The Weatherhead Center’s 2003-04 Sidney R. Knafel Dissertation Completion Fellow will be Etienne Baba Yehoue, a Harvard University doctoral candidate in political economy and government. Yehoue’s theoretical and empirical research focuses on the economics and politics of currency unions and country risk-sharing. He has a particular interest in the emergence and stability of currency blocs and the dynamic of bloc expansion and foreign direct investment in Central and West Africa. The grant is named for Sidney R. Knafel, the chairman of the Center’s Visiting Committee from 1991 to 2000.

Graduate Student Associates:

In the coming year the Weatherhead Center will be home to a multidisciplinary group of 22 doctoral candidates from the departments of Anthropology, Government, History, History and East Asian Languages, Economics, Law, Political Economy and Government, Public Policy, and Sociology. These graduate students are all working on topics related to international affairs. Graduate Student Associates are provided with office space, computer resources, and research grants, and they participate in a variety of seminars, including graduate student seminars, during which they present and receive feedback on their work.

2003-04 Graduate Student Associates are listed below with their research interests.

Daniel Aldrich, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is investigating how states learn from their interaction with citizens who resist attempts to construct state-supported but often controversial facilities like nuclear power plants, airports, and dams.

Tahmima Anam, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, is conducting an ethnographic study of the Bangladesh war of independence with an emphasis on the relationship between peasant freedom fighters and urban guerilla youth during the independence movement, a relationship that has been neglected in the historiography of the Bangladesh war.

Warigia Bowman, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, is conducting a cross-national, comparative study of the effect of interorganizational collaboration on the development of technological infrastructure in poor and rural communities.

Christian Brunelli, a Ph.D. candidate in government, studies how politics influences the development of institutions governing policing organizations in Japan, and the emergence of cooperative relationships between the police and their respective communities.

Michael Burtscher, a Ph.D. candidate in history and East Asian languages, is researching idealism and ideology under the Meiji State, specifically focusing on intellectual elites and the political significance of philosophy in Meiji Japan.

Mark Copelovitch, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is exploring how domestic politics within the industrialized countries shaped international responses to financial crises in the 1980s and 1990s.

Fotini Christia, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, is seeking a theoretical approach to explain the variation among refugee (Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs) return policies pursued by the different political elites in postwar Bosnia.

Haley Duschinski, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, is studying social experiences of violence and displacement among Kashmiri Hindu migrants living in temporary conditions in Delhi, India.

Nicola Gennaioli, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, is conducting a study of the interplay of capitalist and precapitalist institutions in Africa, specifically with regard to private contracting and the organization of judicial systems.

Daniel Gingerich, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is researching the causes of administrative reform in multiparty presidentialist systems in Latin America using a theoretical framework that combines a focus on pre-electoral coalition formation and illicit party financing.

Michael Horowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in government, explains how cross-national differences in evaluations of power undermine the assumptions of current deterrence research with his research project that will utilize qualitative case studies and statistical analysis to build a more accurate way of predicting deterrence failures.

Andrew Kennedy, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is conducting a comparative study of Chinese and Indian foreign policy.

Jee Young Kim, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, is studying the variations in labor practices among Korean-funded firms in Vietnam’s footwear industry, which is explained by interfirm relations and global labor-rights movements.

John Ondrovcik, a Ph.D. candidate in history, is exploring the new cultural meanings and structures that arose out of civil war violence in Germany and Russia from 1918 to 1923.

Abena Osseo-Asare, a Ph.D. candidate in history of science, is conducting a documentation of phytomedical research in Ghana since 1850 in the context of the popular use of herbal medicine, tracing interactions between scientists and herbalists working to understand potent medicinal plants.

Moria Paz, an S.J.D. candidate at the Law School, is focusing on the point of juncture between nonterritorially defined ethnic communities and international law and diasporatic networks as they provide a novel model for international collaborative systems.

Kira Petersen, a Ph.D. candidate in government, compares the issues that arise in democratic disputes with the issues that arise in disputes between other dyads, examining how these issues affect conflict resolution.

David Singer, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is conducting an analysis of the international harmonization of domestic regulations in the areas of money laundering, banking, insurance, securities, and accounting.

Naunihal Singh, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is developing and testing a theory concerning when attempted coups fail and when they succeed.

Allison Brownell Tirres, a joint Ph.D. candidate in history and S.J.D. candidate at the Law School, is studying the legal history of the United States-Mexico borderlands, with a focus on border residents and their experiences with legal institutions in an international zone.

Lily Tsai, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is conducting an investigation of local governance and the provision of public goods in rural China.

Predissertation Grant Recipients:

The center awarded five Predissertation Grants to Harvard doctoral degree candidates who are in the early to middle stages of dissertation research projects related to international affairs. In most cases, the grants will be used during the summer for travel and other research-related expenses.

Cari Jo Clark, a Ph.D. candidate in population and international health, is conducting a study designed to estimate the extent of and factors associated with domestic violence against women in Amman, Jordan.

Daniel Epstein, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is comparing the development of political parties in democratic Russia and Brazil and Russian regional party organizations.

Michael Horowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in government, explains how cross-national differences in evaluations of power undermine the assumptions of current deterrence research with his research project that will utilize qualitative case studies and statistical analysis to build a more accurate way of predicting deterrence failures.

Mikhail Pryadilnikov, a Ph.D. candidate in government, is studying the process of state-building in post-Communist Eastern Europe by focusing on bureaucratic transformation.

Allison Brownell Tirres, a joint Ph.D. candidate in history and S.J.D. candidate at the Law School, is conducting a study of the legal history of the United States-Mexico borderlands, with a focus on border residents and their experiences with legal institutions in an international zone.

Weatherhead Center Grants for Independent Projects organized by Undergraduate and Graduate Student Groups: The Weatherhead Center was pleased to award grants during the 2002-03 academic year to seven undergraduate student groups and five graduate student groups to support projects that address their interests in international affairs. Grants were used to support student-run conferences, speaker series, study groups, special seminars, and occasional off-campus experiences that benefit students.

Undergraduate student group grants:

A grant was awarded to the Harvard AIDS Coalition for events that aimed to raise awareness among undergraduates to the global AIDS crisis. The center awarded a grant to the Harvard African Student’s Organization to help support start-up costs for its new magazine publication, The Harvard African. The Society of Arab Students received a grant for several events that sought to raise awareness among undergraduates about Arab peoples and issues. A grant was awarded to the College Corps for its project to place students in volunteer jobs in developing countries. The center gave a grant to the Harvard Fair Trade Initiative’s Speaker Event on women and globalization. The student-run publication on Latin America, ZALACAIN, received a grant for its issues published during fall 2002. The Taiwanese Cultural Society received a grant for its panel and lecture on “Democratization and Contemporary Politics in Taiwan.” A grant was awarded to the new Harvard Focus Latin America magazine. A group of undergraduates received a grant for a field experience trip to Kenya. The Harvard Japan Society received a grant for its East Coast Japan America League Conference. Bhumi Magazine received a grant to help support the most recent issue of its publication. The Harvard Radcliffe South Asian Association received a grant for a South Asian author symposium.

Graduate student group grants:

The Weatherhead Center gave a grant to graduate students who organized the Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Student Conference. Students in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures received a grant to support a conference titled “RAF’s Germany: Terrorism, Politics, and Protest.” A grant was awarded to graduate students in the History Department for their International History Graduate Student Conference. The Harvard Islamic Society received a grant for its conference titled “Islam in America 2003.” A grant was awarded to the 9th Annual Harvard Development Conference.