Weatherhead’s grants, fellows named

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has announced that it has awarded 59 student grants and fellowships amounting to more than $190,000 for the 2005-06 academic year. Twenty-four grants will support Harvard College undergraduates, and 35 will support graduate students. In recent years, the center has significantly expanded its support for Harvard students, both increasing financial resources and the number of student awards available, and establishing new programs and seminars for students.

Twenty-four Harvard College juniors and sophomores have received summer travel grants to support senior thesis research on topics related to international affairs. After their return in September, undergraduate associates will be encouraged to take advantage of the resources of the center, and during the spring 2006 semester the students will present their thesis research in Weatherhead Center seminars open to the Harvard community. The Weatherhead Center grant recipients, along with their summer research projects, are as follows:

Kathryn Berndtson (special concentration in applied social ethics), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Rwanda to investigate the role of empathy in post-genocide reconciliation.

Manav Bhatnagar (South Asia studies and government), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to India to analyze the Kashmiri separatist movement and state response.

Kevin Ching (social studies and East Asian studies), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will research the effect of legal reforms on NGO progress, operation, and efficacy in China.

Ryan Coughlan (special concentration in environmental policy) will study the international politics of environmental contamination caused by the U.S. military in Panama.

Lindsay Crouse (history), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will research the history of the dop system, the partial payment of farm laborers with wine, in Western Cape, South Africa.

Mina Dimitrova (economics), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will study the effects of armed conflict on women’s social status in Sri Lanka as measured by their labor force participation.

Kathryn Eidmann (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to assess the role of liberal discourse in transnational feminist movements, specifically focusing on domestic violence and women’s advocacy.

Huma Farid (history) will travel to Spain to examine the relationships between Christian patrons and Muslim scholars in medieval Spain.

Johnhenry Gonzalez (history) will travel to Paris to conduct research in French archives on the Haitian revolution.

Vaibhav Gujral (social studies) will examine the effects of migration of educated elite on higher education institutions in developing countries, specifically looking at Argentina.

Doris Huang (government), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will examine the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and pro- and anti-Americanism in Mexico and Argentina.

Mary Jirmanus (social studies), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will travel to Ecuador to research an agrarian organization’s efforts regarding the Andean Free Trade Agreement, as well as their internal democratic practices.

Gabriel Loperena (government) will travel to Venezuela to study the regime effects of former President Betancourt’s alienation of the Venezuelan radical left.

Alecia McGregor (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will examine how international aid agencies in Uganda consider gender differences in providing orphan care.

Radina Mihaleva (economics), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will study the evolution of household wealth in Germany, 1993-2003, and its levels, structure, and distribution.

Soojin Nam (social studies) will conduct research on women and conflict resolution, using the North-South Korean conflict as a case study.

Joseph Pace (social studies and Near Eastern languages and civilizations), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will study the effect of U.S. foreign policy on the organization, prioritizing, and appeal of oppositional groups in Syria and its impact on the prospects of reform.

Zoë Sachs-Arellano (philosophy and African studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will conduct a case study on the possibility of a paradigm shift in approaches to international development and education; focusing on individual agency in Namibia.

Anjali Salooja (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will examine how female engagement in textile production affects traditional gender roles in India.

Aroonsiri Sangarlangkarn (economics), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will study the evolution of Thailand’s health program and its effect on income distribution.

Virginia Schnure (social anthropology and African/African-American studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Uganda to explore how doctors and nurses at Buhinga Hospital implement the nation’s health system despite severely limited means.

Tazneen Shahabuddin (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Durban, South Africa, to investigate the potential of microfinance as a vehicle for providing social protection to street traders.

Michael Wu (economics and East Asian studies) will conduct a cost-benefit analysis on international workplace standards certification and sustainability among China’s small- and medium-size apparel companies.

Linda Zou (government) will conduct research on immigration policymaking in Britain and France.

The Weatherhead Center’s 2005-06 Dissertation Completion Fellows are Michael Horowitz and Sarah Wagner. Horowitz, the center’s Sidney R. Knafel Fellow, is a Harvard doctoral candidate in political science, and his dissertation is titled “The Spread of Revolutions in Military Affairs: Causes and Consequences for International Power and Conflict.” This grant is named for Sidney R. Knafel, the chairman of the Center’s Visiting Committee from 1991 to 2000. Wagner is a Harvard doctoral candidate in anthropology. Her dissertation is titled “The Return of Identity: Technology, Memory, and the Identification of the Missing from the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

In 2005-06, the Weatherhead Center will be home to a multidisciplinary group of 24 doctoral candidates from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences departments of Anthropology, Government, History, History and East Asian Languages, Political Economy, and Government (jointly administered with the Kennedy School of Government) and Sociology; the Kennedy School’s Public Policy Program; and the Law School’s S.J.D. program. All of the students are working on topics related to international affairs. The center provides its Graduate Student Associates with office space, computer resources, and research grants, and they participate in a variety of seminars, including their own graduate student seminars during which they present and receive feedback on their work. The Weatherhead Center Graduate Student Associates, along with their research projects, are listed below:

Ben Ansell, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: An analysis of the determinants of public investment in human capital, particularly focusing on the role of international forces.

Sepideh Bajracharya, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology: How rumor, political intrigue, conspiracy theories, and prophecy mediate the relationship between neighborhood systems of justice and national palace level politics in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal.

Pär Cassel, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History: Nation building and extraterritoriality in East Asia in the 19th century.

Sei Jeong Chin, Ph.D. candidate, Committee on History and East Asian Languages: Historical changes in relations between the practice of news making and government policy formation during the period of national crisis and nation-building that spanned the years 1931 to 1952 in modern China.

Asif Efrat, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: An original framework for understanding judicial development through a macro analysis of court reforms across countries and across time.

Magnus Feldmann, Ph.D. candidate, Committee on Political Economy and Government: Comparative political economy of post-socialist institutions, especially wage bargaining/industrial relations; applications of varieties of capitalism to post-socialism.

Daniel Gingerich, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Causes of administrative reform in multiparty presidential systems in Latin America using a theoretical framework that combines a focus on pre-electoral coalition formation and illicit party financing.

Pengyu He, S.J.D. candidate, Law School: Access to justice: legal aid in China.

Michael Horowitz, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: The spread of revolutions in military affairs: causes and consequences for international power and conflict.

Zongze Hu, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology: From revolution to the politics of everyday life: changes in perceptions of the “state” in rural North China.

Jee Young Kim, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology: Study of variations in labor practices among Korean-funded firms in Vietnam’s footwear industry, to be explained by interfirm relations and global labor-rights movements.

Yevgeniy Kirpichevsky, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Developing a rational choice theory of states’ uses of intelligence and counterintelligence strategies.

Diana Kudayarova, Ph.D candidate, Department of History: Labor policy and labor-market strategies of white-collar professionals in the Soviet Union.

Siddharth Mohandas, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Explaining the success or failure of U.S. state-building efforts in foreign interventions.

Phillip Yukio Lipscy, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Indigenizing the stickiness of international institutions: Will conduct an empirical examination of a theory that explains how international institutions change as a function of underlying variables in the policy area.

Manjari Miller, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Post-colonial ideology and foreign policy, historically contingent state interests: The cases of India and China.

John Ondrovcik, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History: Exploration of the new cultural meanings and structures that arose out of the civil war violence in Germany and Russia from 1918 to 1923.

Shannon O’Neil, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: The impact of social security reforms on social organization and participation in Latin America.

Sandra Sequeira, Ph.D. candidate, Committee on Public Policy: The politics of privatization in Sub-Saharan Africa; political economy of institutions.

Hillel Soifer, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government: Describing and explaining variation in the development of state power across countries in Latin America, focusing on the cases of Chile and Peru.

Sarah Wagner, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology: The return of identity: technology, memory, and the identification of the missing from the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Joseph Wicentowski, Ph.D candidate, Department of History: A history of the “hygiene police” in modern Taiwan, from Japanese colonial rule to Chinese Nationalist rule.

Emily Zeamer, Ph.D candidate, Department of Anthropology: How media, globalization, and traditional Buddhist ideology are influencing changing ideas about feminine duty and moral responsibility in contemporary Thailand.

The Weatherhead Center awarded nine Pre- and Mid-Dissertation 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. The recipients are as follows:

Fotini Christia, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy, will continue her research on ethnic alliance formation during civil war. She examines the cases of Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Fabian Drixler, a Ph.D. candidate in history, will examine infanticide discourses, population policy, and the doubling of recorded fertility in northern Japan between 1800 and 1900.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson, an Ed.D. candidate in education, will conduct a mixed methodology study examining why immigrants and long-time residents form bridging relationships, the benefits they gain from them, and how motivations to bridge differences change through associational behavior.

Zahra Jamal, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, will study Muslim voluntarism in South Asia and the United Kingdom to compare church-state-civil society relations and their effect on policy.

Andrew Kennedy, a Ph.D. candidate in government, will continue his dissertation research in New Delhi on India’s approach to nuclear weapons under Nehru.

Douglas Kriner, a Ph.D. candidate in government, will analyze how and to what extent domestic political factors – Congress, the media and public opinion – influence presidential decision making in military affairs.

Phillip Lipscy, a Ph.D. candidate in government, will conduct an empirical examination of a theory that explains how international institutions change as a function of underlying variables in the policy area.

Stanislav Markus, a Ph.D. candidate in government, will research the Westernization of corporate governance institutions under conditions of malleable property rights, looking at the cases of Russia and China.

Daniel Sargent, a Ph.D. candidate in history, will continue research for his dissertation titled “From Internationalism to Globalism: The United States and the Transformation of International Politics, 1965-1980.”