The Center for Global Initiatives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has awarded more than $96,000 to 39 students conducting work around the world.
The Center for Global Initiatives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has awarded more than $96,000 to 39 students conducting work around the world.
The students received grants from five of the center’s international student funding programs.
The opportunities range from small grants that support internships to the two-year Peacock REACH (combination of “research” and “teach”) Fellowship, which supports the research and teaching of a doctoral student.
“We are proud to support the innovative work of students across the University,” said Tripp Tuttle, program officer and coordinator of the awards. “Our awardees this year are from seven different professional schools plus the College of Arts and Sciences.”
The students will pursue projects this summer and next year. This fall they will participate in the center’s Student International Research Symposium.
“It’s exciting to see the impressive caliber of our awardees,” said Niklaus Steiner, center director. “We hope that these experiences are transformative in the academic and personal lives of these students.”
The awards and recipients are described below, with hometowns in bold.
Peacock REACH Fellowship
This two-year fellowship, valued at $30,000, allows one doctoral candidate to conduct field research in one year and then teach a related course the second year. The fellowship is named in honor of UNC anthropology professor James L. Peacock for his longstanding commitment to global education. It was created by a gift from the Twelve Labours Foundation of Carbondale, Colo.
Ali Coleen Neff
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, communications studies
Country of research/travel: Senegal
Neff’s project aims to document and study Senegalese women music makers and make available to undergraduate student’s understandings of how the growing Senegalese women’s hip-hop movement employs the medium of popular music and the practices of “cossan,” or traditional culture. She will study how the movement promotes community, national and transnational political transformations, and how it intersects with the global hip-hop movement.
Pre-Dissertation Travel Awards
These awards send doctoral candidates into the field for preliminary explorations of potential research materials in preparation for writing dissertation proposals.
Kate Clouse
Chapel Hill
Doctoral candidate
Gillings School of Global Public Health, infectious diseases
Country of research/travel: South Africa
Clouse will explore ways to increase access to life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) programs for HIV patients. Many patients in South Africa die before enrolling in such programs. Clouse will eventually focus her dissertation on linking HIV testing services to ARV clinics.
Sarah Dababnah
Durham
Doctoral candidate
School of Social Work
Country of research/travel: West Bank
Dababnah’s research aims to assess the availability and quality of autism services in the West Bank. Currently, little is understood regarding support for families with autistic children in the Middle East. Dababnah plans to use her research to strengthen her dissertation proposal to develop an intervention model that aims to provide better services for these families.
Joanna Furno
Carrboro
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, mathematics
Country of research/travel: South Korea
Joanna will work with leading female mathematicians. She plans to expand her knowledge and hopes to strengthen the female math community through relationship building.
Daniel Giblin
Carrboro
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, history
Country of research/travel: Russia
Giblin’s research focuses on the role of women in the construction of anti-tank defense networks during World War II. He hopes to better understand both the relationship between individuals and the Soviet state and the changes in gender roles that resulted from female participation in defense projects.
Derek Holmgren
Carrboro
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, history
Country of research/travel: Germany
Holmgren will research a West German transit camp active in the decade after World War II. He will analyze policies toward different types of individuals who passed through the camp, including refugees and prisoners of war. Holmgren hopes that the policies will reveal West German priorities for post-World War II reconstruction.
Joellen McBride
Chapel Hill
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, physics
Country of research/travel: Chile/Canary Islands
McBride will test a prototype device she built for use on the SOAR telescope in Chile. The Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research is a partnership of UNC, Michigan State University, the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (run by the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatories) and Brazil. During the summer, McBride will use the device to observe activity in a nearby galaxy undergoing an intense period of star formation. If all is successful, she will expand use of the device to other telescopes.
Brian Miller
Carrboro
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, ecology
Country of research/travel: Tanzania
Miller will study the effect that diverse responses to drought have on the Maasai population, whose livelihood depends on animal herding. He seeks to understand whether attempts at environmental conservation in times of drought negatively affect the way of life of local communities.
Adair Rispoli
Durham
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, British Romanticism
Country of research/travel: England
Rispoli will travel to London, where she will research the interaction between literature and natural philosophy in Romantic works. In particular, she will look at the writings of John Hunter and William Blake. This pair forms the basis of Rispoli’s doctoral research.
Carolina Undergraduate Health Fellowships
These fellowships enable promising UNC undergraduates to create a self-designed health-related project anywhere in the world. The fellowships are investments in talented students whose medical and cultural experience will strengthen the future of health care in the United States and the world.
Amy Davenport
Carrboro
Senior
School of Nursing,
Country of research/travel: Mexico
Davenport will volunteer in a public health clinic in a small, rural village outside of Oaxaca City. This experience will include working with nurses to provide care to clients, developing an intervention to promote the health and well-being of the clients and assessing the need and desire to develop a more intensive UNC student presence volunteering in the community.
Catherine Patterson
Raleigh
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, biology
Country of research/travel: Ghana
Patterson will be one of eight UNC students from Project Heal, a student-run nonprofit group, seeking to improve the health and safety of children and staff at a day care in Lawra, a rural community in northern Ghana. Her group plans to build two pit latrines with slabs at Holiness Day Care, where 132 children and four staff members have no access to improved sanitation facilities and consequently practice open defecation. The project will help improve sanitation and water quality and reduce the spread of disease.
Matthew Ragazzo
Wilmington, N.C.
Rising junior
Gillings School of Global Public Health, environmental health sciences
Country of research/travel: Republic of Moldova
Poor sanitation and unhygienic practices negatively effect the health of millions of children around the world. Ragazzo’s project aims to address this issue by implementing a hygiene education project in one or two schools in the Republic of Moldova, the poorest country in Europe. By adding this curriculum to schools and training teachers how to educate future students about hygiene, this project will maximize the number of children reached and ensure its sustainability.
Natalia Smirnova
Tallahassee, Fla.
Rising junior
Gillings School of Global Public Health, nutrition
Country of research/travel: Russian Federation
This project places Russian magical folk healing in a contemporary context. Examining both folk healing and biomedical institutions, Smirnova hopes to find ways in which the best qualities of magic and medicine can come together for more humane and accessible health care.
C.V. Starr International Scholarships
These awards are intended to enable UNC students with financial need to undertake independent, internationally-oriented experiences. Undergraduates who are U.S. citizens and international graduate students are eligible. The Starr awards were established in 2004 with an endowed gift from The Starr Foundation of New York.
Paolo Bocci
Brescia, Italy
Master’s degree candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, anthropology
Country of research/travel: Ecuador
Bocci will conduct field research on the conditions of new immigrants in the Galapagos Islands. Conservation and tourism pose an increasingly critical dilemma: while providing significant economic opportunities and attracting new labor, they also impose severe restrictions on people who live there. Bocci’s ethnographic research will shed light on residents affected by the tourism-inspired goal of presenting a pristine and peopleless image of the archipelago.
Esther Majani
Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
Master’s degree candidate
Gillings School of Global Public Health, health behavior and health education
Country of research/travel: Belize
Belize is ranked first in Central America for rate of HIV/AIDS infection per capita. Sparsely populated, it is seriously vulnerable to loss of human and economic capital. This three-month project at the Red Cross Society in Belize will develop age-appropriate and evidence-based curricula to address stigma, discrimination and violence associated with HIV/AIDS. It will be concurrent with the government’s effort to address HIV/AIDS as not only a health issue, but also a multi-dimensional human development one.
Sana’a Mallah
Chapel Hill
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, poltical science
Country of research/travel: Palestine/Israel
Mallah’s project is designed to increase awareness of events that take place between Palestinians and Israelis. Its goal: to bring peace between the two sides through conflict resolution dialogue and documented encounters of both Palestinians and Israelis working side by side. The project is expected to create a pathway for UNC students who are interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to connect with the dialogue, and to volunteer overseas with a sound and unbiased organization – the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information.
Miranda Patterson
Henderson
Rising junior
College of Arts and Sciences, international studies
Country of research/travel: Uganda
Patterson will help initiate an after-school health program – Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies – at the New Hope Orphanage in Busia. The program will provide adolescent orphan girls in Uganda with general health and HIV/AIDS education. The girls will then teach others about risks and prevention, fostering a sustainable program that addresses a major problem in Uganda
Paul Schissel
Chapel Hill
Doctoral candidate
College of Arts and Sciences, anthropology
Country of research/travel: Thailand
Examining Thai boxing, or muay Thai, in impoverished northeastern Thailand, Schissel will ask how movements Thai men repeat again and again establish boundaries, historical continuity and memory. Specifically, he will explore how Thai boxing creates and transforms the boundaries of a rural, underclass Thai person, investigating how this person delegates force across class categories and religious-secular, rural-urban and local-global divides. This research will include a broad survey of muay Thai camps in villages throughout rural Isan, allowing Schissel to trace boxers’ migratory pathways within the Thai city-state while determining an appropriate location in which to carry out doctoral fieldwork.
Hannah Spring
Kernersville
Rising senior
Gillings School of Global Public Health, environmental health science
Country of research/travel: Kenya
Spring will work with the Lwala Community Alliance in Rongo to design and implement a sanitation education program at the primary school level. This project aims to improve health by focusing on the importance of sanitation practices in lowering the incidence of diarrhea. Through this project, she hopes to use her passion for global health, love of children and education in environmental health to create a sustainable program that educates kids about sanitation.
International Internship Awards
These awards support UNC undergraduates and master’s degree candidates who have secured internationally-focused internships that will advance their academic and professional careers. Upon completing internships and returning to UNC, students should build the experience into their academic program. Ideally, upon graduation, students will land jobs with the same or a similar organization.
Diana Bloom
Raleigh
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, German language and literature
Country of research/travel: Germany
This summer Bloom will work at the U.S. Consulate in Dusseldorf, focusing on European and Eurasian economic and political affairs. The internship is part of the highly competitive State Department Student Internship Program.
Lindsey Buckingham
Pittsboro
School of Medicine,
Country of research/travel: Guatemala
Buckingham will research sexually transmitted infections among sex workers. She will assess the effectiveness of public health initiatives designed to curb the spread of such infections.
Cortney Evans
Lake Mary, Fla.
Rising senior
Arts and Sciences, International Studies
Country of research/travel: India
Evans will spend the summer with a local non-governmental organization in Jodhpur. Her work will address community development and social justice issues, with a particular focus on difficulties faced by the Dalit underclass.
Kimberly Frank
Waxhaw
Master’s degree candidate
College of Arts and Sciences,
Country of research/travel: France
Frank will work for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris this summer. She will undertake research and organize conferences for the Markets in Education Program. Her project aims to provide recommendations on the educational system’s place in market economies.
Megan Gassaway
Charlotte
Rising senior
Journalism and Mass Communication
Country of research/travel: Tanzania
This summer, Gassaway will intern for Students of the World, a French nonprofit. For 10 weeks, she will work with other UNC students to produce a documentary on efforts to combat the global clean water crisis. They will film the work of a non-profit organization in Tanzania, then travel to Texas for post-production.
Mariah Hoffman
Efland
School of Medicine,
Country of research/travel: Malawi
Hoffman will travel to Lilongwe, where she will assess the progress of the Hospital Guardian Program at the Kamuzu Central Hospital. The program, which developed in response to a shortage of trained health care workers, uses friends and family members to assist in patient treatment. Hoffman will help improve the program through her research on its effectiveness.
Lauren Kennedy
Chapel Hill
Rising junior
College of Arts and Sciences, anthropology
Country of research/travel: Tanzania
Kennedy will intern for Students of the World, a French nonprofit, this summer. For 10 weeks, she will work with other UNC students to produce a documentary on efforts to combat the global clean water crisis. They will film the work of a non-profit organization in Tanzania, then travel to Texas for post-production.
Margaret McDowell
Roanoke, Va.
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, political science
Country of research/travel: Kenya
Margaret will intern this summer in the Nairobi slum of Kibera with Carolina for Kibera, a nonprofit affiliated with UNC. The organization, run by Kenyans with input from international volunteers, operates youth soccer leagues, a medical clinic and other programs to help the people of Kibera.
Sarika Mendu
Chapel Hill
Rising sophomore
College of Arts and Sciences, economics
Country of research/travel: Guatemala
Mendu received a Michael W. Stephens International Internship award, for an international project in business or economics, from the UNC Center for Global Initiatives. She will partner with the Carolina Microfinance Initiative and Lemonade International, a Raleigh nonprofit, to address issues of poverty in Guatemala City. She will work in the slum of La Limonada to implement a microfinance program that empowers individuals to start their own businesses.
Barron Monroe
Durham
Master’s degree candidate
School of Government, public administration
Country of research/travel: China
Monroe will intern with the State Department at the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang. He will focus on political and economic topics, including human rights, political dissidence and internal Chinese economic policies.
Elliot Montpellier
Greensboro
Rising senior
Gillings School of Global Public Health, environmental health science
Country of research/travel: Jordan
Montpellier will collaborate on an urban agriculture project in Amman. The project aims to address issues of food security and poverty through its promotion of urban agriculture and related micro-enterprises. Montpellier is particularly interested in studying the health impact of agricultural use of treated wastewater.
Katelyn Mote
Wilmington, N.C.
Rising junior
Gillings School of Global Public Health, health policy and management
Countries of research/travel: United States, Moldova, Botswana
Mote will intern with the Bilateral State Partnership Program, a partnership between North Carolina and the countries of Moldova and Botswana. The program aims to build relationships between these countries and North Carolina in the areas of conflict resolution and global health. Mote will interact with foreign leaders and work on international projects.
Erin Murphy
Elizabeth City
Rising senior
Journalism and Mass Communication
Country of research/travel: Ukraine
Murphy will work for Abolishing Injustice in the 21st Century. She will collaborate with the organization as it works to rescue and rehabilitate victims of sex trafficking.
Anita Rao
North Liberty, Iowa
Rising senior
Journalism and Mass Communication
Country of research/travel: Tanzania
Rao will be part of a team filming a documentary on the work of Children’s Safe Drinking Water, a non-profit organization in Tanzania. She will spend four weeks in Tanzania followed by six weeks in Texas to complete production. The project aims to document solutions to critical problems such as unsafe drinking water.
Kathleen Reilly
Carrboro
Master’s degree candidate
Gillings School of Global Public Health, health behavior and health education
Country of research/travel: Tanzania
Reilly will research ways to reduce HIV risk and partner violence among young men. She will focus on the role microfinance and health interventions might play in addressing such issues.
Jonathan Tarleton
Watkinsville, Ga.
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, Latin American studies
Countries of research/travel: Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Haiti
Tarleton will work with Central American Legal Assistance to help people seeking asylum in the United States. He will interview asylum seekers and provide immigration information to others. Tarleton plans a career in immigration law.
Benjamin Turman
Asheville
Rising junior
College of Arts and Sciences, Chinese
Country of research/travel: Lithuania
Turman will intern for the U.S. Embassy to Lithuania as part of the national, competitive Department of State Internship Abroad program. Based in Vilnius, he will work in the Regional Security Office on projects aimed at strengthening relations between Lithuanian and American law enforcement.
Lauren Visser
Wilmington, N.C.
Rising senior
College of Arts and Sciences, environmental science
Country of research/travel: Uganda
Visser will work with the Katosi Women’s Development Trust, focusing on projects related to water systems, sanitation and nutrition. In particular, Visser will work with local schools to develop a curriculum on basic health education. She has a Lori Lewis Shipper International Internship Award from UNC’s Center for Global Initiatives.
Alexandra Ward
Bellaire, Texas
Rising junior
College of Arts and Sciences, biology
Country of research/travel: Lesotho
Ward will work alongside community health workers and outreach nurses. They will develop an educational HIV/AIDS curriculum and provide expanded psychosocial support programs for infected youth.
Lauren Westervelt
Hampstead
Master’s degree candidate
Gillings School of Global Public Health, health behavior and health education
Country of research/travel: Sri Lanka
Westervelt will intern with Emerge Global, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young women who have survived abuse to rediscover and celebrate their personal beauty, develop self-sufficiency and become leaders in their communities. At its core is the Emerge Bead Program, which enables girls to become jewelry designers. The aim of Westervelt’s project is to develop a robust reintegration strategy and network of support for girls once they graduate from the Emerge Bead Program.
Note: Tuttle can be reached at (919) 843-7546 or tripp.tuttle@unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589