2025-2026 Graduate Student Research Grants

Childhood, Voice, and Silencing: Francoist Censorship in the Work of Elena Fortún and the Celia Series

This project examines the censorship of children’s literature during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, focusing on the works of Elena Fortún and her Celia series.

Using archival records from the Archivo General de la Administración, the research project reconstructs how state censorship shaped and altered her texts. It analyzes how themes of gender, morality and childhood were modified under authoritarian control, and how Fortún’s writing navigated these constraints.

The study highlights how her work created space for subtle resistance and reveals how censorship influenced the portrayal of childhood and women’s voices.

The Fragrant Aroma of Home: Black Foodways and the Embodied Practice of Identity and Belonging Abroad 

This project examines how food practices shape identity and placemaking among Black expatriates living in Portugal, including African American, Afro-Caribbean, and continental African communities.

It explores how diasporic foodways preserve cultural knowledge and resist erasure in transnational contexts shaped by colonial legacies and contemporary racial dynamics.

Using multi-sited ethnography, including interviews and analysis of both physical and digital spaces, the research project highlights how everyday practices such as cooking and communal eating sustain diasporic connections.

By situating Portugal as a significant site in Afro-diasporic history, the study expands geographic perspectives in African diaspora studies. It emphasizes foodways as practices that support cultural continuity and collective belonging. 

The Causal Effect of Socioeconomic Grievances on Opposition to Populism in Power

This project examines whether socio-economic grievances among supporters of populist governments lead to declining political support over time. It focuses on how factors such as relative deprivation and status loss shape voter behavior when governments fail to deliver expected economic outcomes.

Using an original panel survey in Turkey conducted in 2023 and 2026, the study tracks how individual attitudes and political preferences change over time. The research project analyzes whether increasing hardship leads supporters to shift their partisan identification and voting behavior, offering insight into the durability of populist rule.

Everyday Life in Venezia Giulia Under Fascism: Resistance, Assimilation, and Adaption 

This dissertation examines how residents of Trieste, Gorizia, and Pola responded to Italianization and fascistization policies between 1918 and 1945. It explores how individuals navigated the transition from Habsburg rule to Italian sovereignty, and how non-Italian identities persisted, adapted, or resisted under state pressure.

Focusing on interactions among state officials, local resisters, and exiled communities, this dissertation highlights the complexity of everyday life in Italy's northeastern borderland.

It shows that identities such as Slovenian, Friulian, and Carinthian endured and evolved despite efforts to impose a unified national identity. The study also considers how religion, culture, and history shaped these responses. 

From Temporary to Long-Term Stay: Mothers' Perspectives on Educational Experiences and Aspirations of Ukrainian Refugee Students in Poland

Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, approximately one million Ukrainian refugees remain in Poland, including 170,000 children enrolled in Polish schools. This research project examines how Ukrainian refugee mothers view their children’s educational aspirations and school experiences as temporary displacement becomes long-term settlement.

Grounded in the literature on refugee education and displaced children, this study draws on interviews with 30 Ukrainian refugee mothers whose children have attended Polish schools for at least one year since Russia’s invasion.

Findings will provide insight into how shifting expectations from short-term exile to longer-term residence shape mothers’ perspectives on their children education and as such can also inform policy and practice focused on refugee education.

Regionalism, Cross-Pressures, and Political Parties' Strategic Flexibility in Multi-level systems

This project examines how regionalism and state decentralization shape European political parties’ campaign strategies in national and subnational elections. It focuses on how parties adjust their positions on issues such as welfare, immigration, European Union integration and regional autonomy.

The study argues that these shifts depend on the strength of subnational identities, the degree of political decentralization and the organization of parties at the territorial level. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research project analyzes when and why parties modify their messaging across electoral contexts.

Threads of Peace: Unravelling Coordination Among Peacebuilders in Frozen Conflicts The Puzzle of Peacebuilding Coordination: Insights from Cyprus, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland

This dissertation examines why peacebuilding efforts advance in some frozen conflicts but stall in others. It frames peacebuilding as a coordination challenge among actors, emphasizing how collaboration and relationships shape outcomes.

The study introduces a distinction between coordinated and fragmented peacebuilding and analyzes how factors such as mistrust, uncertainty and spoiler influence affect cooperation. Using a mixed-methods approach, it compares cases in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland to assess how coordination influences conflict trajectories.

The research project contributes to understanding peacebuilding effectiveness and conflict transformation. 

Rupture and Reconstruction: Earthquakes, Migration, and the Making of Internal Borders in Central Italy

Following the 2016 earthquakes in south-central Italy that destroyed 50 villages, recovery efforts have reshaped migration patterns and local economies.

This project examines two heavily affected towns on either side of a historic North–South development divide, where reconstruction is jointly managed by state agencies, the Catholic Church and private firms. It explores how reliance on immigrant labor has emerged without consistent access to stable employment or legal residency.

By connecting migration and disaster studies, the research project analyzes how post-disaster rebuilding redistributes social capital and political-economic power across lines of place, class and citizenship.

The Gambler’s Code: Gambling, Law and Violence in Eighteenth-Century China

This dissertation examines the relationship between gambling and law in eighteenth-century Qing China. Although gambling was officially banned, it remained widespread across the empire.

Drawing on legal archives and local records, the study explores how unenforceable laws shaped everyday practices. It argues that gaps in enforcement allowed gamblers to develop informal rules that governed behavior and contributed to patterns of debt and violence.

By examining these dynamics, the project shows how weak enforcement transformed legal prohibitions into symbolic measures with limited practical effect.

Housing as Maternal Work: Financial Management and Speculative Urbanism in South Korea

This project examines how middle-class mothers in South Korea manage housing decisions as a central form of family and financial labor.

In a context where apartment ownership, school access, and redevelopment shape life opportunities, mothers play key roles in real estate decisions, education planning, and household coordination. The research project argues that this work connects family life to broader housing markets and urban development patterns.

Based on ethnographic research and interviews in Seoul, the study shows how these practices influence neighborhood dynamics and social inequality. It highlights how everyday decision-making contributes to broader patterns of urban change.

Gambling Lives: Young Desire Migrants, Transient Spaces, and the Hidden Lives of Online Gambling Work

This project examines why young Taiwanese workers enter the high-risk online gambling industry and how their experiences reflect broader patterns of migration and social change.

Focusing on Taiwan and the Philippines, it explores how temporary overseas work shapes workers’ aspirations, daily routines, and sense of time and mobility. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork, including interviews and demographic data, the study highlights the conditions and challenges of this form of labor.

It situates these experiences within global labor and migration systems, emphasizing the role of temporary and precarious work in shaping contemporary migration pathways.

The Life and Afterlives of Lost Camptown Cinema: Race, Diaspora, and Memory in Postwar Korea

This project reconstructs how South Korean cinema from the mid-1950s to the 1970s represented U.S. military camptown women, Black soldiers, and Black-Korean subjects, whose racially entangled histories have been warped and disavowed both on screen and in the archive.

Drawing on surviving films and archival materials of lost films such as censorship records, production stills, and press discourse, I trace how these figures were represented, constrained, and occasionally reclaimed across shifting censorship regimes and cultural climates.

Rather than dwelling on absence, this project traces the afterlives of these lost films through the counter-memories, diasporic connections, and new contemporary cinematic creations they sparked. These afterlives constitute a living archive, one that belongs as much to diaspora as to the nation, and reclaim the memory of racially entangled camptown histories in postwar Korean cinema.

Human-Animal Relations in Late Chosŏn Korea 

This project explores the cultural history of domesticated animals—dogs, cats, horses, and cattle—in late Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). It examines how these animals were understood and managed in everyday life, and how they moved between roles of labor, companionship, and other social positions.

The research project investigates attitudes toward animals as well as practices of care, control, and interaction. It also considers how animals shaped social structures, administrative systems, and philosophical ideas about the human-animal relationship.

By situating animals within broader social and cultural contexts, the study highlights their role in shaping daily life in Chosŏn Korea. 

Rewiring the International Monetary System 

This project examines how digital currencies are reshaping the global monetary system and redistributing informational power among states, firms, and individuals. It focuses on how the data generated by digital payment systems affects state authority, regulation, and international financial relationships.

The research project analyzes government responses to these changes, including the development of central bank digital currencies and cross-border payment networks. It also explores differences in how the public adopts digital currencies across countries.

By connecting monetary innovation to governance and global power dynamics, the study contributes to debates on the future of the international financial system. 

Role of Muslim Women in Northern Nigeria

This research examines how Muslim women in Northern Nigeria contribute to local development and social change. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kano, Kaduna, and Kwara states, it explores women’s roles in small-scale entrepreneurship, education initiatives, faith-based organizations, and civic engagement.

The study highlights how women navigate religious, cultural, and structural constraints while actively shaping their communities. By centering their perspectives, it challenges portrayals of Muslim women as passive and instead emphasizes their agency and leadership.

The findings contribute to broader discussions on gender, religion, and development in Africa.

Social Media, Youth Mobilization, and Digital Activism in Africa: Insights from Kenya’s Gen Z Protest Movement

This project examines how social media shaped youth mobilization during Kenya’s 2024 Generation Z protest movement. It explores how digital platforms enabled decentralized organization, collective identity formation, and rapid coordination, while also exposing activists to surveillance and repression.

Using interviews, content analysis, and online observation, the study analyzes how young people engaged in digital activism and political participation. It also situates Kenya’s experience within broader patterns of youth-led movements across Africa.

The research project contributes to understanding how digital tools influence contemporary activism and democratic engagement. 

Pan-African Liberated Zones: A Case Study of the Committee for a Unified Newark’s African Free School, 1967-1974

This project examines the Newark Africa Free School as a site of community-based education, political organizing, and Pan-African thought. It explores how the school’s curriculum and practices fostered political awareness and cultural identity while navigating internal and material challenges.

The study situates the school within broader transnational networks connecting Black activism in Newark to African liberation movements. Drawing on archival research, including materials from the University of Dar es Salaam, it traces how ideas and educational models circulated between the United States and the African continent.

The project highlights how community-led schools functioned as spaces of political formation and exchange within global movements. 

From Diaspora to Development: Assessing Sustainable Real Estate Opportunities in Senegal 

This project examines how members of the African diaspora engage in real estate development in Senegal with a focus on sustainability and community impact. It explores how diaspora investors can move beyond extractive models toward approaches grounded in local partnerships and cultural context.

Based on interviews and field research in Senegal, the study identifies opportunities in residential and community-oriented development. It highlights how real estate can support economic participation, entrepreneurship, and long-term development.

The research project offers insights into how diaspora investment can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable growth in West Africa. 

Teachers’ Experiences with the 2014 Education and Training Policy and Its Impacts on Students Toward Self-Reliance

This study examines how rural secondary school teachers in Tanzania experience and implement the 2014 Education and Training Policy, revised in 2023. Focusing on teachers in Kilombero District, it explores how they interpret policy goals related to competence-based learning and respond to reform demands in resource-constrained environments.

Using oral histories and narrative inquiry, the research project analyzes how teachers adapt their practices and navigate institutional challenges. It also considers how centralized policy processes and historical inequalities shape classroom experiences and professional identities.

The study highlights the importance of incorporating teachers’ perspectives in the development of more equitable and context-responsive education policies. 

Analysis of Primary Language Instruction Initiatives in Senegal

This study examines the impact of primary language instruction programs in Senegal, where most education is conducted in French rather than students’ first languages. It analyzes how these programs affect literacy and student performance across subjects.

Drawing on interviews with teachers and administrators, the research project also explores how these initiatives are implemented and perceived. The study considers whether instruction in national languages can improve learning outcomes and support broader educational goals.

It contributes to ongoing discussions about language policy and education in francophone Africa. 

Reading Amman Otherwise: Migrant Belonging in Urban Jordan 

This project examines how migrant workers experience and interpret urban change in Amman, Jordan. While existing accounts focus on long-term residents, this study centers South Asian migrant men working in construction, factories, and service industries.

Drawing on interviews and participant mapping, it explores how migrants navigate both older neighborhoods and new developments tied to state-led urban projects. Many participants have lived in the city for over a decade, offering perspectives on multiple phases of transformation.

The research project highlights how migration and labor shape everyday experiences of belonging in a rapidly changing urban environment.

Artificial Intelligence in Chile: A Factor of Economic Development or Environmental Disaster? How Corporate Influence, Public Opinion, and Environmental Expertise Impact AI Development

This project examines how artificial intelligence development in Chile intersects with environmental concerns, public opinion, and corporate influence. It explores how companies account for the environmental impacts of AI, particularly resource use, and how the public engages with these issues.

Focusing on both rural and urban perspectives, the research project draws on interviews with policymakers, environmental experts, activists, and corporate actors. It considers how technological expansion interacts with existing challenges such as water scarcity and economic development.

The study contributes to understanding the social and environmental implications of AI in Chile.

Reimagining Afropanameñidad: Racial Identity and Activism in Panama 

This project examines how Afro-descendant Panamanians, or Afropanameños, understand and express racial identity in contemporary Panama. It focuses on the experiences of politically engaged Afropanameños as they navigate questions of race, belonging, and national identity.

Drawing on interviews and participant observation conducted during Black Ethnicity Month, the study explores how Afropanameños connect their identities to broader Black diasporic conversations. It also examines their involvement in activism through cultural production, education, and community organizing.

The research project highlights how Afropanameños are shaping contemporary understandings of race and belonging in Panama. 

Bajan Metallurgy: An Archival Exploration of Local Blacksmithing, 1600-1800s

This project examines metal artifacts discovered in Trents Cave in St. James, Barbados, a site linked to the transatlantic slave trade. It investigates the origins, composition, and cultural significance of these materials using archaeometallurgical and archival methods.

The research project considers whether the artifacts reflect West African ritual practices and how they relate to the lived experiences of enslaved communities. By analyzing both physical materials and historical records, the study explores expressions of resilience and cultural continuity. It aims to recover overlooked histories of the African diaspora in Barbados.

The Pronunciation of “rr” in Tucumán, Argentina: Innovation and Gender 

This project examines how the Spanish “rr” sound is pronounced in Tucumán, Argentina, and how it is changing over time. While a traditional hissing pronunciation has long been common, a newer variant resembling the English “r” has recently emerged.

The study investigates how this shift is spreading in everyday speech and whether it is associated with gender differences. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with local speakers, the research project explores how language change reflects broader social dynamics. It contributes to understanding regional variation and linguistic change in Argentina. 

Agroecological Transitions and Peasant Organizing in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico

This project examines agroecological practices and campesino organizing in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico, a region shaped by industrial agriculture and export production. It explores how farmers in communal lands are revitalizing traditional practices and local food systems in response to these pressures.

Using interviews, participant observation, and participatory mapping, the research project analyzes how these efforts reshape land use, food production, and community organization.

The study highlights how agroecology serves as a framework for challenging existing agricultural models and supporting alternative approaches. It contributes to understanding community-driven responses to environmental and economic change. 

Sovereign Forests, Disputed Territories: Law, Adivasis and the Human 

This project engages with the embodied experiences of Bastar Adivasis within the legal framework. Using courtroom ethnography and multispecies methodology, it explores the claims made before the law, the experiences therein, to understand how law is imagined, practiced, stretched, and contested in everyday life.

The project aspires to engage with the materiality of the forest and the law to locate the human beyond the law and the state categories.  It also considers the possibilities and limits of agency and resistance within legal institutions. 

Geographies of Extraction: Chinese Capital and the Remaking of Thar

This project examines how Chinese investment in coal extraction is reshaping the Thar region. It situates these changes within broader initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews and mapping, the research project explores how energy development transforms land, water systems, and social relations. It also considers how extraction is experienced and justified within broader economic and political processes.

The study highlights how large-scale infrastructure projects reorganize both environments and communities.

In the Wake of Silence: Sound, Ethics, and Everyday Politics in Kashmir 

Centered on the re-emergence of Muharram processions in Kashmir after decades of restriction, this project hopes to examine how religious sound shapes ethical life, social relations, and public space.

Drawing on ethnographic research in Srinagar and Budgam, it follows lament, recitation, rhythm, and silence across processions, neighborhood gatherings, and everyday listening practices. Combining sound recording, listening interviews, sketching, poetry and collaborative mapping, the project traces how mourning travels through streets, homes, and memory.

It also attends to the practical conditions that shape public audibility, including permissions, route management, and changing forms of surveillance. By treating sound not simply as expression but as something that organizes attention, movement, and relation, the dissertation hopes to offer an account of how listening becomes an ethical practice and how religious life remakes social, sensory, and political worlds in contemporary Kashmir. 

Sacred Script, Broken Lines: Rethinking Hindu Marriages in the US Diaspora

This project examines Hindu marriage practices among first-generation Indian migrant women in the United States. Focusing on communities in New Jersey and North Carolina, it explores how religious traditions and social expectations around gender, caste, identity, and family are reshaped in diaspora contexts.

Using ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation, the research project analyzes how women navigate changing social and economic conditions. It highlights how marriage practices are adapted while maintaining connections to cultural and religious frameworks.

The study contributes to understanding how traditions persist and evolve within migrant communities. 

Kashmiri Pandit Homes and the Politics of Displacement in Srinagar

This research project examines Kashmiri Pandits who remained in Kashmir during and after the 1990s Tehreek, even as large number of Pandits migrated to parts of India. Many who stayed abandoned their ancestral homes amid militarized violence.

Centering the Pandit experience, the project challenges homogenizing, religiously coded displacement narratives that state-scripted discourse uses to delegitimize the Kashmiri Muslim led freedom movement. It explores how people sustain notions of home under conditions of militarized occupation and settler colonialism without having physically left their homeland.

Contributing to critical displacement and critical Kashmir studies, it interrogates victimhood frameworks that leverage "Pandit suffering" to justify India's authoritarian control over Kashmir

Cultivating Distress for Domination: Articulating Groundwater and Agrarian Distress in Drought-Prone Maharashtra, India with Dalit Women Farmers

This project examines how water scarcity and access are shaped by caste and gender in drought-prone regions of Maharashtra, India. It focuses on Dalit women, who face compounded challenges in securing water for both household and agricultural use.

Drawing on ethnographic research and life histories, the study explores how social systems influence access to land and water resources. It highlights how water scarcity is produced through social and institutional arrangements rather than natural conditions alone.

The research project contributes to understanding the links between caste, gender, and environmental inequality.

A Political Ecology of Livelihoods, Disasters and Climate Adaptation in Sundarbans, Bangladesh

This project examines how climate change adaptation policies affect communities in the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh. It explores how large-scale, top-down adaptation efforts often prioritize technical solutions while overlooking local knowledge and everyday practices.

Based on qualitative fieldwork, the research project analyzes how adaptation is shaped by power dynamics, knowledge systems, and historical inequalities. It highlights how local communities experience and respond to these interventions.

The study contributes to understanding the social and political dimensions of climate adaptation in vulnerable regions.