Weatherhead Center awards grants, fellowships

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs recently announced that it has awarded 27 grants to support Harvard College undergraduates and 12 to support Harvard doctoral students for research this summer. In recent years the Weatherhead Center has significantly expanded its support for Harvard students by increasing financial resources, expanding the number of student awards available, and establishing new programs and seminars for students.

Weatherhead Center undergraduate associates

Twenty-seven Harvard College juniors have received summer travel grants to support their thesis research on topics related to international affairs. After their return in September, the Weatherhead Center will encourage these undergraduate associates to take advantage of the resources of the center’s research environment, and during the spring 2008 semester the students will present their thesis research in a conference open to the Harvard community. The undergraduate associates, along with their summer research projects, are as follows:

Jordan Baehr (anthropology), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will travel to Beijing and Harbin to conduct a study of models and markers of modernity in two Chinese universities.

Simi Bhat (environmental science and public policy), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to New Delhi and Jammu to research environmental identity in internally displaced people of Kashmiri origin.

Joseph Busa (social studies), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will study democratization and the Ecuadorian indigenous movement in Tena, Ecuador.

Sakura Christmas (history), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will spend time in four Chinese cities — Beijing, Harbin, Hailar, and Qiqihar — as well as Tokyo to study Japanese colonial policy from 1900 to 1945 toward Russian refugees and indigenous peoples in Manchuria.

Richard Cozzens (music and Near Eastern languages and civilizations) will conduct ethnographic field research about rap music and hip-hop culture in Jordan.

Eva Dickerman (history) will travel to London and Vienna to examine Article 80 of the Treaty of Saint Germain and its aftermath in order to understand the construction of race, citizenship, and national identity in 1920s Austria.

Darja Djordjevic (anthropology) will conduct ethnographic research with immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at the Comité médical pour les exilés (Comede) in Paris.

S. Adam Goldenberg (social studies) will travel to Paris to conduct an ethnographic examination of French national identity, citizenship, and multiculturalism.

Elizabeth Grosso (social studies), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will travel to Brussels to interview European party elites and activists to measure the development of transnational parties.

Tyler Goodspeed (history and economics) will travel to Berlin, Essen, and Duisberg to utilize the corporate archives of Krupp, Thyssen, and Mannesmann to glean key data relevant to the 19th century German steel industry.

Alicia Harley (environmental science and public policy), a Samuels Family Research Fellow, will conduct a critical analysis of Egyptian policy addressing the environmental impact of urbanization in Cairo.

Milo Harman (history), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Israel and Ethiopia to research the Falash Mura, a Christian offshoot of Ethiopian Jewry.

Caitlin Hartman (social sciences), a Rogers aFamily Research Fellow, will research the efficacy of hip-hop music in inspiring civic engagement and mobilizing the youth in Senegal and whether hip-hop could help nongovernmental organizations or the government.

David Hausman (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Kenya to study the interaction of civil society and the state in Nairobi’s slums.

Noah Hertz-Bunzl (history), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will conduct research in Boston, Washington, D.C., and South Africa to compare competing American ideologies about the Cold War in Africa by examining how South African interests and apartheid clashed with competing American interests.

Ariel Huerta (government) will study of the effect of Salvadoran gangs on Salvadoran and Guatemalan democracy and governability in San Salvador.

Alexandra Jacobs (history), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Dakar, Senegal, to examine different paths to independence, the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, and its role in West Africa.

Robert Jellinek (Slavic studies and government) will interview legal advocates about their motivations for and experience engaging the European Court of Human Rights and will obtain caseload data in order to determine why so many cases against Russia have been brought to the court.

Eric Kouskalis (sociology), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will research the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on education in Namibia and South Africa.

Alexandra Kukunova (government) will assess the influence of international and domestic factors on the development of work-family reconciliation policies in France and Spain.

David Lebowitz (government), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Brussels to conduct archival research on Belgian colonial native policy in Rwanda.

Cherry Miao (social studies) will conduct a comparison of the culture and attitudes of Chinese workers in multinational companies with workers in Chinese firms to determine the impact of economic globalization on Chinese society and culture.

Utpal Sandesara (social studies) will examine the barriers to and prospects for integration of HIV-AIDS care and prenatal care within the Guyanese health-care system.

Neil Sawhney (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Cairo to conduct research on the emergence of moderate Islamist movements in the modern Egyptian political system.

Erika Solomon (history and literature) will travel to Israel to examine the challenges of developing dual historical narratives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Anton Troianovski (social studies) will travel to Moscow to conduct research on the new generation of Russian journalists who are the first to grow up in post-Communist society.

Rajiv Venkataramanan (social studies), a Rogers Family Research Fellow, will travel to Sri Lanka to research displaced and orphaned Sri Lankan children’s beliefs about ethnicity and warfare.

Pre- and mid-dissertation grants

The Weatherhead Center awards pre- and mid-dissertation grants to Harvard doctoral candidates who have passed preliminary exams and are conducting research on a project related to the core research interests of the center. These grant recipients are named graduate student affiliates of the Weatherhead Center and are encouraged to attend center seminars and to connect with faculty, fellows, visiting scholars, and undergraduates at the center. The Weatherhead Center pre- and mid-dissertation grant recipients, along with their research projects, are as follows:

Sana Aiyar, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, is conducting research on British multiculturalism by examining the construction of national and religious identity among the South Asian diaspora in London.

Naor Ben-Yehoyada, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is conducting a study of the relationship between immigration politics of Maghrebines in Sicily and clandestine marine immigration between Tunisia and Sicily though an ethnography of Tunisian fisherman in Sicily.

Oeindrilla Dube, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Public Policy, is researching how price shocks in the international oil and coffee markets affected civil war in Colombia.

Sabrina Péric, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology, is examining the intersections of violence, identity, and primary resource extraction in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnographic present and past.

Nico Slate, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, is researching connections between African-American and South Asian freedom struggles in the 20th century.

Kedron Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is conducting archival and ethnographic research on Maya producers in Guatemala’s apparel industry after that countries’ entrance into the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Zoe Trodd, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of American Civilization, is studying the historical memory of 19th century abolitionism in six protest movements and their literature, from 1965 to 2007.

Matthew Underwood, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science, is conducting research on medical knowledge, industrial development, and political economy in the 17th century English Atlantic world.

Juliet Wagner, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, is researching the medical use of film and photography to document “shell shock” during World War I.

Alex Wellerstein, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science, is studying the historical, national, and international development of the use of secrecy — information control — as a method for governing nuclear weapons.

Ann Marie Wilson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, is conducting an investigation into the origins of modern American human rights activism, focusing on the Anglo-American humanitarian movements that arose between 1880 and 1920 in response to crises in Armenia, Russia, and the Congo Free State.

Sean Yom, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government, is researching authoritarian regimes in the Middle East as well as U.S. foreign policy and theories of democratization.