Joshua Belton and Agata Surma
Agata and Josh will be studying the ways two major agricultural interventions–colonial development and the Tono Irrigation Project–have changed livestocks role in several communities in Upper East Ghana. They will first visit the British National Archives in London to research the pre-colonial conditions in the area and assess how colonial development unfolded there. They will then fly to Accra, Ghana, where they will interview experts to learn about the area’s past and present. Afterwards, they will travel to Upper East Ghana to observe the area and conduct interviews, which will […]
Evarosa Holt-Rusmore
Throughout the Sierra Leone conflict, many girls and young women are abducted and sexually abused. The result of the abuse and suffering is often pregnancy. Especially after the end of civil war in 2002, young mothers who return to their communities confront social stigmatization. This has had marginalizing effects for both mothers and their children. Eva Holt-Rusmore’s research will address the effects of community stigmatization on the children of young mothers. Ethnographic observation of these children’s lives through participation in a Freetown school, as well as informal interviews with individuals […]
Fele Uperesa
Samoans have often been associated with the bulk and athleticism of professional football players, but that reputation has undergone a drastic change paralleling the transition in traditional diets. The term nutritional transition denotes a shift in dietary consumption and energy expenditure linked to a growing epidemic of obesity-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). American Samoa, a trust territory, and Samoa, an independent nation-state, have both experienced significant changes in consumption practices. Emerging research attributes this nutritional transition to economic development and the waning availability of traditional food staples. Trade policy not only […]
Tiasha Palikovic
A double major in Political Science and Psychology, Tiasha will be studying how Yugoslavia’s political transition out of communism has affected the region’s stance toward individualism, seeking to determine whether the move toward liberal democracy has produced a genuine effort towards increasing freedom of expression. She will be testing her hypothesis that anti-individualism is a potent political tradition in this region by doing a comparative study of the treatment of dissidents by three different regimes that have held power here over the past half century: nationalists during the rule of […]
Faisal Ghori
Faisal will examine the changes made to Immigration and Naturalization Service statutes following September 11, 2001, focusing on the ways these changes targeted Pakistani immigrants, who were often detained for months and then were summarily deported. His project hopes to shed light upon the legalistic basis for this treatment of Pakistani immigrants, and its effects upon them. In order to assess the extent of the changes to INS policies — when, why, and how they took place — Faisal will first be working closely with the Migration Policy Institute at […]
Hector Vivero
The 2000 presidential election ended seventy one years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Instituiconal, PRI) government in Mexico. Faced with new political circumstances, the institutions created by the perfect dictatorship were forced to adapt to the Mexican Transition to Democracy. The purpose of this project is to investigate the responses of the National Teachers Union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacion, SNTE), formerly one of the most important strongholds for PRI domination. Since the democratic transition involved a decentralization of responsibilities to state and local authorities now governed […]
Geoffrey Brookshire
There is a wealth of literature documenting the asymmetric role of the two cerebral hemispheres in different aspects of cognition. Although this has been most exhaustively studied with respect to language and spatial cognition, robust laterality effects are also present in emotion. Experiments performed on right-handed subjects associate the left hemisphere with approach-based behavior and positive emotional states and the right hemisphere with withdrawal and negative emotions. Right-handers, along similar lines, are quicker to respond to stimuli of positive valence when they are presented on the right side of space […]
Patrick Chi-Wai Tsui
Patrick’s research will focus on the status of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong in the wake of the former colony’s 1997 return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Since 1949, the Vatican has refused to recognize the PRC’S Catholic Church, maintaining its only ties to China through the two European colonies on its southeastern coast: Hong Kong and Macao. Through historical research and contemporary interviews and field-study in Beijing and Hong Kong, Patrick will both examine the historical relationships between the Catholic Church in mainland China and the […]
Daniell Newman
Daniell’s research in the burgeoning field of eGovernment will examine the structure, implementation, and deployment issues of the use of the Internet as a tool for governance in the United States. For his Senior Honors Thesis in Political Science, he will travel to Washington D.C. and Sacramento to conduct case studies of the eGovernment plans of the State of California, US Treasury Department, and a plan created for the federal government by the Council for Excellence in Government. Daniell will determine if a combination of elements of these efforts could […]
Laura Alarcón
Neighborhood associations in east Caracas have been pivotal in organizing the large demonstrations, an average of five per week, that have characterized public protest against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez during the last year. Laura’s project, which will constitute her senior honors thesis in anthropology, will examine how two middle class neighborhoods in east Caracas exercise power against Chavez’s administration, and how this exercise of power affects other sectors of society. Through participant observation, in-depth and key informant interviews in two east Caracas neighborhoods (Chacao and California Norte) that are specifically […]