Strategic Initiatives Funding
OIP International Pre-Dissertation and Small Grants Competition
2008-09 Recipients
Naheed Aaftaab – India
Sociocultural Anthropology (CLA)
Aaftaab will conduct ethnographic fieldwork studying the interconnections of local cultural identities and processes of globalization in the growing information technology in the middle-class in Hyderabad, India.
Philip Barbosa – Uganda
Infectious Disease, Neurology, Pediatrics (Medical School)
Barbosa will conduct pilot testing of these methods on healthy children assessing the functionality of these methods. In this project he will be combining the studies of child health, neuropsychology and microbiology with the goal of creating better methods of cognitive testing in sick children in the international setting.
Koni Benson – South Africa
African History (CLA)
Benson will conduct research in Cape Town and complete life narrative interviews with key informants. She will visit a researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Cape Town, and use the university’s archives and African Studies Library, as well as the South Africa library that holds key historical newspaper archives. Benson will also conduct out core secondary interviews with key informants to complete the set of life narratives of African women at the center of her study.
Yu-Ju Chien, France – Italy, Switzerland
Organization Studies, Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Technology Studies (CLA)
Chien will collect first-hand data at the headquarters of OIE, WHO and FAO in Paris, Geneva, and Rome. She will collect archival data on avian flu reports, interview key officials and scientists of these organizations, and collect information on potential informants.
Bethany Cook – Uganda
Global Health (Medical School)
Cook will research patients with HIV Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS) at the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI). She will set up a telemedicine site to establish a connection between the IDI and the University of MN for consultation and educational purposes. This project would provide useful information on the pathophysiology of IRIS in the skin, leading to improved diagnostic capabilities and potential therapies in the field of HIV.
William Daddario – Italy, United Kingdom
Theater Historiography (CLA)
Daddario will conduct archival research in Venice, Italy, and London, England on 18th Century Venetian theatre design and performance. He will visit the Archive of State in order to locate first person accounts of theatre events in the mid-eighteenth century at one of Venice’s seven theatres. Daddario will also examine prints and drawings they have acquired by the Venetian architect and designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi at the London Museum.
Jose Debes – Tanzania
Internal Medicine (Medical School)
Debes will assess whether patients co-infected with Hepatitis B have higher risk of developing liver-related problems when receiving HIV-therapy. He will study the role of ultrasound of the abdomen as an inexpensive method for screening these patients, and predict who will get complications from HIV therapy.
Ruolian Fang – China
Organizational Behavior (Carlson School)
Fang will research social networking in China called, "guanxi" and how it plays an important role in the organizational life of Chinese employees, especially newcomers.
She will conduct four surveys and interview participants at three-month intervals in a year. Fang has developed a theoretical model to capture the newcomers dynamic socialization process.
Kristin Kenning – Poland
Music (CLA)
Kenning will research Polish Art Song by studying with Jadwiga Rappe and Jolanta Pszczó?kowska-Pawlik at the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. Polish Art Song is mostly inaccessible to American musicians – printed music in the United States is extremely lacking and guides for performance are nonexistent in English. Kenning's research will support a future thesis on Polish Art Song.
Margaret Kosmala – Tanzania
Ecology (CBS)
Kosmala will conduct preliminary research to test methods for measuring wildebeest birthing areas and assess the extent of current conflict between wildebeest and Maasai pastoralists. She will begin her research in villages in the eastern part of the Serengeti in which wildebeest have been continuously described as problematic. Kosmala research results will inform policy decisions about land use and conservation.
Kate McCleary – Nicaragua
Comparative & International Development Education (CEHD)
McCleary will research school attendance, academic performance, and desertion in rural areas of the Chinandega region of Nicaragua. In cooperation with Save the Children’s (STC) Nicaragua Office, McCleary will conduct qualitative research in three schools, two communities where STC is currently active and one community where no interventions around school retention have been implemented.
Beth Pettitt – Guyana
Acoustic Communications and Behavioral Ecology (CBS)
Pettitt's project addresses critical issues in amphibian conservation by integrating research across traditional disciplinary boundaries of bioacoustics, reproductive biology, and wildlife management. She will examine the vocal and reproductive behaviors of the golden rocket frog (Anomaloglossus beebei), a highly vulnerable species found only in Guyana, South America, to inform the development of a collaborative conservation management plan. This plan will provide guidelines for the collection and use of vocally mediated individual identification data to monitor population size and reproductive rates as well as a potential means by which wildlife managers can assess reproductive potential and population stability.
Kristen Rau – Czech Republic
Global Public Policy (Humphrey Institute)
Rau will intern with the State Department in the Consular section of the U.S. Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic. She will work directly under the Consul General, Stuart Hatcher. She will accompany the ambassador to events, draft speeches, and conduct research. Rau will research the Czech Republic's continuing economic transformation.
Govind Shantharam – United Arab Emirates
International Relations and Political Theory (CLA)
Shrantharam will conduct fieldwork at the Central bank of UAE in Abu Dhabi. The Central Bank has been a crucial hub of efforts to develop a global framework for regulating Hawala (informal money transfers between South Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America). Shrantharam will access the records of these conferences to gain an insight into the processes and rationales that inform the emerging regulatory framework for Hawala. He will also access public data and studies on the magnitude of the Hawala corridor.
Uttam Sharma – Nepal
Development Economics (CFANS)
Sharma will implement a pilot study to prepare for a full evaluation of an education and economic development project that provides low-cost laptop computers to poor students in low-income countries. Sharma will interview teachers, students and parents involved in the pilot study to look at ways to fine-tune the implementation strategy. He will also design draft questionnaires, assist in the selection of schools for the main study, and meet with scholars and policy-makers.
Omar Tesdell – Israel, Palestinian Authority
Geography (CLA)
Tesdell will research the interconnected environmental and political relationships that shape Palestinian food insecurity using the case of agro-ecological change in the Bethlehem district. By investigating these links he hopes to better understand and thus attempt to ameliorate the conditions undermining food security. Tesdell will also volunteer at the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem's sustainable agriculture program.
Carlos Vargas-Salgado – Peru
Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature and Linguistics (CLA)
Vargas-Salgado's research focuses on demonstrating how urban community-based plays, as well as popular and ritual performances in rural Andean zones, have preserved a living memory of the political violence in Peru. He will visit archives and performance libraries of the Commission of Truth and Institute of Andean Studies (Lima) and Center Bartolome de las Casas (Cusco).
Julie Weiskopf – Tanzania
African History (CLA)
Weiskopf's dissertation research explores the rich interior life of resettled communities as members of the Ha cultural and languages group of western Tanzania adjusted to both colonial and post-independence resettlement schemes. Weiskopf will research pertinent files remaining at the Tanzanian National Archive and conduct a second round of oral interviews in the study villages in Kigoma Region.
Timothy Whitfeld – Papua New Guinea
Community Ecology, Plant Evolution History (CBS)
Whitfeld will research plant community assembly in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Whitfeld will compare young and old forests in an attempt to understand changes in structure from early to late succession. He will combine data on plant evolutionary history with data on selected functional traits and test hypotheses on community structure and patterns of trait diversification.
Adam Zeilinger – Brazil
Agroecology, Ecological Risk Assessment (CFANS)
Zelinger will a comparative analysis of the ecological mechanisms that may contribute to outbreaks of non-target pest insects in genetically modified Bt cotton in the southeast US and Midwest Brazil. Understanding the ecological basis for potential outbreaks will improve models needed to predict the probability and severity of outbreaks, a necessary step to prevent ecological and economic damage from reduced cotton yield and high insecticide use resulting from the outbreaks.