Today at Brown

Five graduate students are exchanging the familiar environs of College Hill for a world of international research this year, thanks to Fulbright-Hays and Fulbright grants.

Harris Solomon, Kathleen Millar, and Jennifer Ashley, all anthropology students, and Eduardo Moncada, from political science, received Fulbright-Hays Fellowships for doctoral dissertation research abroad. Christy DeLair, an anthropology student, will conduct research in Taiwan through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which aims to increase mutual understanding between the United States and other countries.

Solomon will conduct ethnographic research in Mumbai, India, for a year. “My project will explore multiple perspectives about a reported obesity epidemic in India,” he explains. He aims to better understand how threats of disease weave their way into everyday concerns about an individual’s social position and a nation’s viability.

Millar will be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on the work of catadores, collectors who sell recyclable dump material in the city. “I will work alongside catadores,” she says, “to understand their life histories and the social relations created in and through their shared work and residence.”

In Chile, Ashley is examining the impact of a small television station in La Victoria, a poor suburb of Santiago, that transmits alternative local programming. Her project, Ashley says, “will examine the use of sophisticated technology by low-income residents to affirm local identity and create alternative spaces for political debate.”

Also at work in South America is Eduardo Moncada, who is studying the politics of violence, citizen security, and the rule of law in Colombia and Ecuador. He describes his dissertation as a comparative analysis of how violence and economic interests shape coalitions that influence political efforts to make security a public good across several major cities in the two countries.

In Taiwan, Christy DeLair is studying Taiwanese Aboriginal groups and their increasing connection with indigenous groups around the world. “I hope to understand how peoples who previously thought of themselves as mutually distinct come to see each other as not only similar, but related,” she explains. “I will look specifically at indigenous media and cultural exchanges.”

The Fulbright Hays program provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students who conduct research in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to 12 months

Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the largest U.S. international exchange program, offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide.

NOTE: David Lindstrom, associate dean of the Graduate School for academic affairs, will hold an information session on Friday, September 12, at 4 p.m. for graduate students interested in applying for the Fulbright-Hays and Fulbright programs this year. The meeting is at Horace Mann 103, 47 George St.