Alumni Publications

Student & Alumni News: Fellowships, Grants, and Prizes

Read the article Welcome to the Genius Factory about our program's MacArthur "genius" grant winners.

2008-2009

Five anthropology students hold lucrative two-year Writing Across the Curriculum Fellowships. The students are Andrew Newman, Siobhan Cooke, Andrea Morrell, Claudine Pied, and Janette Yarwood. Two anthropology students, Chris Caruso and Lynn Horridge, hold Instructional Technology Fellowships. (posted 10/08)

Raja Abillama won a 2008-2009 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship/The Center for the Humanities ($18,000 + in-state tuition) to pursue work on Secular Sensibilities: Articulations of Family Laws, Religion and Morality in Lebanon. (posted 10/08)

Alessandro Angelini won a 2008-2009 International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in the amount of $25,000 (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) as well as a Wenner-Gren fellowship in the amount of $21,000. These fellowships will assist him in his dissertation research on favelas (squatter settlements) and the production of urban knowledge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Laure Bjawi-Levine has held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of
Anthropology at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California since 2007. (posted 10/08)

Michael Boyle has won a 2008-2009 Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowship in the amount of $17,869. This fellowship will assist his dissertation research on "Declining City, Born-Again Citadel: The Evangelical Reconstitution of Urban Life in Postindustrial America." His project examines the ways in which evangelical social service ministries are meeting needs and reconstituting community relations in postindustrial Canton, Ohio, a city recently designated by Forbes magazine as one of the "fastest dying" in America.

Jessica Brinkworth won a 2008-2009 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in the amount of $15,000 and a 2008-2009 Wenner-Gren fellowship in the amount of $22,959 to support her research on The Evolution of the Human Immune System: Landscape Specific Pathogen Exposure and Human AIDS. (posted 10/08)

Alum Eliza Darling (PhD 2004) has landed an Early Career Award from Goldsmiths College, University of London, to research her project titled “Fire on the Mountain: The Politics of Country Music in Britain and Ireland.”  In Fall 2008, she will begin a three-year lectureship in the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths.   She is also currently on a Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship (2007-2008), writing a book called “The Sheltering Grove: Wilderness Gentrification in the Adirondack Park.”  (posted 10/08)

Christine Folch won a 2008-2009 IIE Fulbright to support one year of research as well as a grant of $24,450 from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. These awards will support her dissertation research on Paraguay’s political culture, state formation, national identity, and geographic imaginary at the Triple Frontera, the border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. (posted 10/08)

Sarah Freidline won a 2008–09 Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research to support work on her dissertation and a two-year fellowship from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology to work in Leipzig with Katerina Harvati and her colleagues. (posted 10/08)

Harmony Goldberg, previously a Chancellor’s Fellow for two years, was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The award covers three years of tuition and a living stipend, and allows her to concentrate on her pre-dissertation studies and explore possibilities for future research. (posted 10/08)

Saygun Gokariksel is a recipient of a 2008-2009 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Pre-Dissertation Award from the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. The award in the amount of $4,000 will aid in research on accusatory practices and the lustration law in post-socialist Poland. (posted 10/08)

Congratulations to Russell Hogg (PhD 2008) and Tara Peburn,who have each won a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine. (posted 10/08)

Christina Honjo Harris received a B. Altman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship ($18,000) for the academic year 2008-2009 and has also received a Dissertation Fellowship from the Center for Humanities, Great Issues Forum.  Tina is also a Helen Wallis Fellow at the British Library and was a member of the 2008 doctoral student jury awarding the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Horizons Prize. (posted 10/08)

Nathan Jones has won several awards to support his dissertation research during 2008–09: an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (average grant amount is $20,000) and an IIE Fulbright. Previously he held an International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) IARO fellowship in Russia. He is using these grants to study how ethnic understanding and identity are produced and lived among people of German descent in Russia and Kazakhstan. (posted 10/08)

Baris Mehmet Kuymulu received a fellowship from the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics for 2008-2009. (posted 10/08)

Tina Lee holds a 2008-2009 American Association for University Women (AAUW) American Fellowship ($20,000) and a Sponsored Dissertation Fellowship ($18,000 + in-state tuition). These awards will help her on complete her dissertation: Stratified Reproduction and Definitions of Child Neglect: State Practices and Parents’ Response. (posted 10/08)

Suzana Maia was awarded a Posdoctoral grant in the Research Center for the Study of Indigenous People at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, to develop the project: "Encounters and Dialogues: anthropology and the new political subjects." (posted 10/08)

Congratulations to Ryan Mann-Hamilton, who has won a very competitive multiple-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his doctoral studies for the years 2008-2011. (posted 10/08)

Shea McManus received a 2008-2009 Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support dissertation research entitled “Ethics and Practical Justice: Muslim Responses to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.” It is jointly funded by the Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences divisions.  She has also received a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace to support Arabic study at Middlebury College during the summer of 2008. It covers tuition and living expenses and carries an additional stipend and travel allowance. (posted 10/08)

Andrew Newman is co-recipient of a grant from the Bourse de Recherche of the city of Paris.  This grant will fund part of Andrew’s dissertation fieldwork, a six-month case study of a neighborhood movement centered around a public garden in northern Paris.  Andrew writes “It is also part of an effort to put together kind of ‘social atlas’ of Paris’s changing public spaces with a comparative eye on New York.”   He has also received a 2008-2009 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to support this work. (posted 10/08)

Ceren Ozgul is a recipient of a 2008-2009 Society for the Anthropology of Europe (SAE) Pre-Dissertation Award in Anthropology from the Fellowship Committee of the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. The award in the amount of $4,000 will aid in research on religious conversion to a minority religion in secular democracies as part of her dissertation fieldwork entitled “From Muslim Citizen to Christian Minority: Legal Implications of ‘Double-Conversion’ in Turkey.” (posted 10/08)

In 2008-2009, Gail Perry-Ryder received the Public Humanities Fellowship from the New York Council for the Humanities. She has also received a Community Service-Learning Grant from Lehman College/CUNY and The Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at City College/CUNY.  She also received a Faculty Development Grant at Lehman College Institute for Literacy Studies and the Carnegie Foundation. (posted 10/08)

For field research in Summer 2008, Ted Powers won a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship.  He is working in affiliation with the Africa Center on a dissertation entitled “Producing Informality in a Post-Apartheid Township: An Investigation into the Relationship between HIV/AIDS and Informal Urban Settlements in South Africa.” Ted has also received a fellowship from CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. (posted 10/08) 

Jeremy Rayner, who currently holds a Wenner-Gren, has won a 2008-2009 NSF in the amount of $1,640 to support his dissertation research on “The ICE is Not for Sale: Property, Value, and Telecommunications Privatization in Costa Rica.” (posted 10/08)

Jill Schennum has won a 2008-2009 NSF grant of $14,000 to support her dissertation on the topic of “Bethlehem Steelworkers: Working Class Families in a Post-Fordist City.” (posted 10/08)

Alum Amy Schreier (PhD 2008) has won a 2008-2009 postdoctoral fellowship in the Duke University Writing Program. (posted 10/08)

Victoria M. Stone won a 2008-2009 MAGNET Dissertation Fellowships ($20,000 + in-state tuition) to support her dissertation research: Social Impact of Transnational Migration and Remittances in Cañar, Ecuador. (posted 10/08)

Steven Wang, won a 2008–09 Graduate Center sponsored dissertation Writing Fellowship fellowship in 2008-2009.  Previously he won a 2007–08 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant ($11,690) and a Wenner-Gren Foundation dissertation grant ($15,705) to support research on Testing the continuity of Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins in Asia. (posted 10/08) 

Nathan Woods has won two grants for the 2008–09 academic year: $4,000 from the American Philosophical Society, and $15,000 from the National Science Foundation. They will support his research on “Integrating Innovation: Academic Innovation, Professional Networks and Scientific Regionalism in the Environmental Sciences.” (posted 10/08)

Janette Yarwood has been named the 2008-2009 Northeast Consortium for Faculty Diversity Visiting Dissertation Scholar at Monmouth University ($32,000). This In-Residence fellowship also provides computer and library privileges, office space, health insurance, and a cordial faculty liaison. There are no work or teaching requirements, and she will have the opportunity to network with fellows and faculty from other network schools (Northeastern, Colgate, Allegheny, Middlebury, University of Vermont, University of Rochester, and others). (posted 10/08) 

Gabriela Zamorano was awarded a 2008-2009 postdoctoral grant at the Museé du Quai Branly in Paris to develop a research project on early ethnographic photography in South America. (posted 10/08)

Summer 2008

Igor Argelino Rodriguez Calderon was recently the recipient of a Smithsonian Latino Center Fellowship in Museum Studies, entailing a series of seminars and a practicum with the Smithsonian Center in Summer of 2008. (posted 10/08)

Lynne deSilva-Johnson won a summer teaching Fellowship and advisory position at the new Bard Urban Institute in New Orleans, to work with undergraduates from all over the country and abroad on urban planning/theory, policy, social action, and community service – as well as serving in a “theory-to-practice” advisement role. (posted 10/08)

In Summer 2008, Archaeology graduate students Frank Feeley, Aaron Kendall, and Konrad Smiarowski participated in a special arctic survival and wilderness medicine course run by Polar Services Inc. for NSF in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Subsequently, all three survived a six-week season in Greenland working with Danish and Greenlandic colleagues on Konrad’s doctoral project on Norse Greenland. (posted 10/08)

Martha Lincoln received a 2008 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (SSRC DPDF) and an Anthropology Program Summer Travel Grant for field research in Vietnam.  She was also a member of the 2008 doctoral student jury awarding the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Horizons Prize. (posted 10/08)

Nomi Stone received a fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to write poetry during the Summer of 2008. (posted 10/08)

Analia Villagra has won an Social Science Research Council (SSRC) pre-dissertation summer research grant in the amount of $5,000 to support her research on human-animal interactions and the way conceptions of nature affect conservation practice. (posted 10/08)

Many other students received funding from a range of sources, including various grants by the National Science Foundation, NSG-AGEP, the Social Science Research Council, the Doctoral Student Research Grant, the PhD Program in Anthropology travel fellowship, and others.  Students carrying out summer research included Elan Abrell (South Africa), Alessandro Angelini (Venezuela), Scott Blumenthal (Kenya) Sam Byrd (American South/Southeast), Risa Cromer (US-California), Daisy Deomampo (India), Carwil James (Bolivia/Ecuador), Esteban Kelly (Brazil), Baris Kuymulu (Jamaica), Janny Llanos (Dominican Republic), Ryan Mann-Hamilton (Dominican Republic), Michael Polson (California),  Kaja Tretjak (South Africa), Preeti Sampat (India), Sophie Statzel (US-Colorado), Yunus Telliel (Syria), and Ana Vinea (Egypt). Katrina Scott carried out dissertation research in New Orleans. Physical anthropologists Siobhan Cooke and Steve Wang were in the field for dissertation research. (posted 10/08)

2007-2008

In academic year 2007-2008,alum Kirk Dombrowski (PhD 1998) won a number of grants: NSF Cultural Scholars Award (PI) “Stochastic Modeling of Injecting Drug User Network Factors in HIV Stabilization Dynamics,” $41,000 (one year); NIH/NIJ RO1(co-PI) “Structure of Methamphetamine Markets in NYC,” $475,000 (two years); NIJ (Multi-City Initiative (co-PI) “The Sexual Exploitation of Underage Children in New York City,” $64,000 (one year); NYCJS (co-PI) “Immigrant Victims of Violence in Nassau County New York,” $160,000 (two years); and NIJ Center for Court Innovation (co-PI) “Community Reactions to Philadelphia Community Courts,” $45,000 (one year).

Ramona Harrison got an NSF Office of Polar Programs Arctic Social Sciences program dissertation improvement grant ($30,000 for 2007-2008) for her collaborative project in Eyjafjord in northern Iceland, and had a very successful season of excavation and survey. She will be working closely with her long- term Icelandic and UK collaborators and taking other CUNY students into the field. (posted 10/08)

Summer 2007

In summer 2007, anthropology students Risa Cromer, Daisy Deomampo, and Kate Griffiths carried out fieldwork in South Africa on an NSF grant (Prof. Ida Susser, PI) on “South Africa’s Civil Society Organizations and AIDS Treatment Access.” (posted 10/08)

Anthropology student Jonathan Stillo has been accepted by the Council for European Studies (CES) at Columbia University 2007 Fellowship Program under the sponsorship of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The fellowship supports Jonathan’s preliminary dissertation research in Romania.

Spring 2007

Four students have won dissertation fieldwork grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation: Andrea Morrell for her dissertation research, “Prison Town: Prisons and the Politics of Economic Development in Elmira, New York”; Nada Moumtaz for her dissertation research, “Piety in Markets of Inalienable Property: An Anthropology of Waqf, Beirut 1826-Present”; Jeremy Rayner for his dissertation research, “‘The ICE is Not for Sale’: Property, Value, and Telecommunications Privatization in Costa Rica,” and Steven Wang for his research on “Testing the continuity of Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins in Asia.”

Four students have won National Science Foundation Fellowships. Harmony Goldberg has won a three-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship which covers tuition and provides a living stipend and an international travel grant. Siobhan Cooke has won a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for her project, “Dental Morphology and Diet in the Greater Antillean Platyrrhines.” Christine Hegel has been awarded a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (in the Law and Social Science Program) for follow-up research in Egypt entitled “A Man’s Word: Dispute Resolution in an Egyptian Port.”

Two students have won US Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Title VI fellowships. Mojeje Omuta was awarded a FLAS for intensive study of Brazilian-Portuguese in Madison for the Summer of 2007. Christine Folch has won a FLAS for intensive Guaraní language study in Paraguay at Instituto de Linguística Guaraní del Paraguay (IDELGUAP)/Universidad Evangélica del Paraguay, also for the Summer of 2007.

Anthropology student Nathan Jones has won an IREX fellowship for dissertation research in Siberia titled “Institutionalizing ‘Germanness’ in Russia and Kazakhstan.”

Anthropology student Ragnar Edvardsson has received a grant for $49,000 from the Icelandic Archaeological Fund for research on a Basque whaling station from the 17th century.

Anthropology student Denise Geraci has been awarded an American Fellowship from AAUW to write her dissertation for 2007-2008.

Anthropology student Nathan Woods has been awarded a Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society under their Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research.

Anthropology student Akissi Britton was awarded a 2007 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship in the research field of Black Atlantic Studies.

Anthropology student Victoria Stone has won an IIE Fulbright for dissertation fieldwork in Ecuador in 2007-2008 for her dissertation research entitled “Social Impact of Remittances and Transnational Migration in Highland Ecuador.” She is an alternate for a Fulbright-Hays.

Anthropology student Roberto Abadie has won a post-doctoral Research Fellowship in the Biomedical Ethics and Genomics Research Program of the Mayo Clinic of Medicine.

Five anthropology students have won Graduate Center fellowships. Lindsey Smith has won a Mario Capelloni Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation “Gestural Communication in the African Apes.”  Banu Karaca was awarded the European Union Studies Center Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation “Claiming Modernity through Aesthetics: A Comparative Look at Germany and Turkey.” Gabriela Zamorano has won a Sponsored Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation “Reimagining the State: Politics, Video and Indigenous Struggles in Bolivia.” Molly Hurley received a Frances Degen Horowitz Travel Award for her dissertation “Beyond Sectarianism?: Community and Violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland.” Akissi Britton has won MAGNET Two-year Fellowship in addition to her SSRC.

Five anthropology students won new Writing Fellowships for 2007-2008: Raja Abillama, Christine Hegel, Tina Lee, Claudine Pied, and Janette Yarwood. In addition, Brenda Biddle, Joshua Moses, and Amy Scheier are returning Writing Fellows.

Anthropology student Chris Caruso has won an Honors College Technology Fellowship for 2007-2008.

Faroes Museum Director Simun Arge has announced that the Anandarko Oil Company has generously expanded its funding of the interdisciplinary, international research effort “Heart of the Atlantic” project with a grant of US $109,000 for the 2007 season. The project is a collaborative effort involving the Faroes Museum, CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, Department of Archaeological Sciences U Bradford, Archaeology Department U Durham, School of Environmental Sciences U Stirling, Department of Geography U Edinburgh and the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO). The Heart of the Atlantic project centers on the historical ecology of the island of Sandoy in the Faroes, with archaeology and Paleoecology combining to provide a new view of long term human –environmental interaction from the early Viking Age down to the present. CUNY grad students have been involved in the project since 2002, and CUNY doctoral student Seth Brewington is working on a PhD project on the large zooarchaeological collections excavated from the deeply stratified sites on Sandoy. The modern community is involved in the project, and we are working with the Faroes Museum, Archaeological Institute Iceland, and the Shetland Amenity trust to develop inter-island connections to aid community-based cultural/environmental tourism and outreach. The project is also part of NABO “Island Connections” program, which has promoted the exchange of students and staff among projects in Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. Last summer two Faroese grad students joined CUNY students Ragnar Edvardsson and Konrad Smiarowski and UK, Finnish, and Danish grad students in projects in Greenland, connecting sites, communities, and scholars. The recent Anandarko grant adds to prior support from the company and generous support from the US National Science Foundation and the UK Leverhulme trust. For a recent overview of project results see: Mike Church, Simun Arge, S. Brewington, T.H. McGovern, J. Woollett, Sophia Perdikaris, Ian T. Lawson, Gordon C. Cook, Colin Amundsen, Ramona Harrison, Yekaterina Krivogorskaya; 2005. Puffins, pigs, cod and barley: paleoeconomy at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands, Environmental Archaeology 10:2, pp. 198-221.

Previous Semesters Funding

Rebecca de Guzman is the recipient of the five-year Predoctoral Fellowship in the Behavioral Science Training Program in Drug Abuse Research sponsored by the National Institutes on Health/National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) as well as the recipient of the National Hispanic Science Network Drug Abuse Fellowship to attend the Summer Research Training Institute at the University of Houston, 2005, sponsored by NIH/NIDA. She recently published the following article: de Guzman, Rebecca; Leonard, Noelle L.; Gwadz, Marya Viorst; Young, Rebecca; Ritchie, Amanda S. & Gricel Arredondo. 2006. “I Thought There Was No Hope for Me”: A Behavioral Intervention for Urban Mothers with Problem Drinking. Qualitative Health Research. 16:9, pp. 1252-1266.

Carolyn Fisher won the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for her dissertation, “Do Gourmet Fair Trade Markets Produce Inequality Among Small-Scale Nicaraguan Coffee Farmers?”

Congratulations to student Joshua Moses who in 2006 was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for Individual Predoctoral Fellows (F31).

David Vine received a one-year appointment as “Public Anthropologist in Residence” at American University.

Albina Hulda Palsdottir recently won the University Student Senate Collegiate Award

Congratulations to student Andrea Morrell who won the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy Award for 2005.

Ramona Harrison and Aaron Kendall have each received a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Thor Thors Memorial Fund, for dissertation research at the Icelandic Institute of Archaeology, summer 2006.

Russell Hogg has won an NSF Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award.

Molly Hurley won a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to support her dissertation fieldwork. The title of her project is “Beyond Sectarianism?: Violence After Peace Accords in Belfast, Northern Ireland.”

Tina Lee received a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for $23,302 for her project entitled: “Stratified Reproduction and Definitions of Child Neglect: State Practices and Parents’ Response.”

Janette Yarwood has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award by the US Department of Education for the 2006-2007 academic year.

Ramona Harrison and Albina Hulda Palsdottir have both been awarded the prestigious Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Scholarships. Ramona Harrison’s grant was for her research on ‘Analysis of medieval faunal remains from the Eyjafjord area in NE Iceland.’ Her project focuses on trade relations and subsistence strategies at the medieval trading site Gásir (NE Iceland) and its context within the North Atlantic. Relevant course work at the University of Reykjavik will help process the data resulting from the project. Research entails zooarchaeological analysis of faunal remains and a survey that will test the potential for comparative midden material at the medieval monastic site at Mö_ruvellir. The resulting data will form the basis for a PhD dissertation, and is to be published in site reports and articles, thus adding to the body of knowledge in the field of archaeology.

Albina Hulda Palsdottir’s research is focused on the archaeofauna from the late medieval (ca. 1493-1554) Augustinian monastery of Skriethuklaustur in East Iceland which can shed light on the various functions of the monastery as an institution in Icelandic medieval society. Analysis of the animal bones can show whether the monastery was being provisioned by outside farms or if it produced its own food. The presence of marine mammals and fish such as seals, haddock and cod at an inland site like Skriethuklaustur can be seen as an indication of the monastery’s role as a landowner, as land rent in medieval Iceland was usually paid in goods such as dried fish. The dietary habits of the monastery’s inhabitants are very interesting as the food consumed is likely to have differed from that eaten at traditional farmsteads. The excavation at Skriethuklaustur has revealed that the monastery likely functioned as a hospice and food would have featured in the nursing and healing that took place there. Coming to The Graduate Center, CUNY to conduct this research was an obvious choice as the Hunter and Brooklyn College laboratories house extensive reference collections of fauna from the North Atlantic, as well as years of faculty experience in working with Icelandic material.

Dr. Gerrie Casey (Asst. Prof. of Anthropology, John Jay College, CUNY Graduate Center PhD 2002) won a Post-Doctoral Writing Fellowship from the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies, housed at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.  She will be in residence in Montreal for the spring semester of 2006, working on a book manuscript under the direction of Nigel Rapport, Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Social Justice. 

Ilisa Lam is the recipient of a 2005-2006 National Science Foundation grant. Her research examines post-Cold War transformations in the mission of U.S. missile defense and entails fieldwork in the U.S. and Republic of the Marshall Islands, where a key test site is located. She is also a 2005 Mellon Foundation Fellow in Security and Humanitarian Action.

Congratulations to anthropology student Rodolfo Corchado, who recently won the annual prize of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico. Rodolfo received the Fray Bernardino de Sahagun prize for the best M.A. Thesis in Social Ethnology and Anthropology in Mexico. The title of his thesis is “No human being is illegal/ningun ser humano es ilegal. Disputando los espacios de la inclusion: el caso de la Asociacion Tepeyac de New York.” 2003. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social (CIESAS), Mexico.  The INAH was founded by Manuel Gamio (Franz Boas’ student at Columbia) in the first half of the 20th century and is the main institution for anthropological research in Mexico. The annual prizes have been granted for 20 years to Bachelor’s, M.A., PhD thesis and research in the fields of social anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, history, historiography and theory of the history, architectonical conservation, and museography. The prize consists of $3,000 and the publication of Rodolfo’s thesis.

The Anthropology department’s winners of 2004-2005 CUNY Graduate Center Dissertation fellowships are Terence Capellini, Elsa Davidson, Erin Martineau, Andrea Queeley, Rachel Sponzo and Jarrett Zigon.

Our new CUNY College Writing fellows are Julian Brash, Elsa Davidson, Larisa Honey, Lynn Horridge, Masako Kato and Pellegrino Luciano. Continuing fellows are Roberto Abadie, Denise Geraci, Tina Harris, Russell Hogg, Suzana Maia, Erin Martineau and Andrea Queeley.

Hearty congratulations to our CUNY Instructional Technology fellows, new and continuing: Terence Capellini, Susan Falls, Christine Hegel, Amy Jones, Laura Kaehler, Tammy McJannet and Wendy Williams.

New and continuing recipients of Robert Gilleece fellowships from The Graduate Center are Shea McManus, Nada Moumtaz, Nelson Ting and Steven Wang. President’s fellows, new and continuing, are Afua Brown, Adrienne Lotson, Mojeje Omuta and Jose Vasquez. Congratulations to all!

Matthew Brown, George Hambrecht, Lizzie Martin, Jeremy Rayner and Melissa Tallman are this Fall’s recipients of Graduate Teaching fellowships. Continuing fellows are Raja Abillama, Abouali Farman-Farmaian, G. Derrick Hodge, Banu Karaca, Andrew Newman and Amy Schreier.

Recipients of 2004 Summer Predissertation Reconnaissance Fellowships were Stephanie Campos (Peru), Nathan Jones (former Soviet republics), Andy Newman (Venezuela) and James Trimarco (Albania).

And congratulations also to our recipients of first-year Chancellor’s and Provost’s Fellowships. Chancellor’s fellows are Alessandro Angelini, Katarina Bodirsky, Diane George and Lauren Halenar. Provosts’s fellows are Christopher Caruso, Cristina Finan, Christine Folch, Kelly Gillespie, Keith Joseph, Dana Natale and Sarah Yahm.

Roberto Abadie was awarded a 2003 grant from The Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy for his research project, “A Guinea Pig’s Wage: Risk and Commoditization on Pharmaceutical Research in America.”

Karen Baab is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant for “Cranial Variation in Homo Erectus” and traveled in Nairobi on a six-month data collection trip.

Brenda Biddle has been awarded a 2004-2005 grant from the German Marshall Fund’s Research Fellowship Program for “Food Sovereignty: Towards a New Politics of Value.”

Jennifer Borishansky received the Fall 2003 Beinecke Fellowship toward graduate work and research projects. Jennifer also holds a research assistantship with Professor Sophia Perdikaris.

Julian Brash was awarded a 2003-2005 student fellowship with The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at The Graduate Center.

Congratulations to Terence Capellini, winner of the 2004-2005 Olshan Dissertation Year Fellowship from The Graduate Center. Terence is also a 2004 recipient of a CUNY Instructional Technology fellowship.

Graduate Telma Carmargo Da Silva (PhD 2002) was the recipient of a 2003 Richard Carley Hunt Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Graduate Eliza Darling (PhD 2004) is a postdoctoral fellow in the Yolanda Moses Visiting Scholar in Policy Studies Program at City College’s Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. She began her fellowship in Fall 2003.

Congratulations to Elsa Davidson, winner of a 2004-2005 Dissertation Year Fellowship from The Graduate Center, awarded for an outstanding dissertation proposal. The title of her project is “‘Every Youth a Start-up’: Aspiration Management among Silicon Valley Youth.” Elsa is also a 2004 recipient of a CUNY College Writing fellowship.

Graduate Molly Doane (PhD 2001) was the 2003 recipient of a Richard Carley Hunt Grant from Wenner-Gren to aid in the research and writing of “Remapping Authority: The New Politics of the Environment in Mexico.”

Melis Ece was the principal recipient of a 2003-2004 Fulbright Hays award for research in Senegal.

Ragnar Edvardsson was awarded a two-year National Science Foundation doctoral dissertation improvement grant in 2003 from the Arctic Social Sciences program for his work in Northwest Iceland.

First-year student Javiela Evangelista is a Mellon Mays Predoctoral Research Fellow for 2004-2009. She is, in addition, the recipient of a 2004 graduate fellowship award from The Graduate Center’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies.

Susan Falls is a CUNY Instructional Technology fellow at Baruch College. In Spring 2003 she was awarded a travel grant to access the extensive De Beers archives in the special collections library at Duke University.

Abouali Farman-Farmaian, a former Geoffrey Marshall Fellow, began his Graduate Teaching Fellowship at Hunter College in Fall 2003.

Carolyn Fisher was the winner of the 2003-2004 Student Leadership Award from the CUNY Office of Student Affairs.

Friederike Fleischer was the winner of a 2003-2004 Graduate Center Dissertation Year Fellowship for “Between the Danwei and the High-rise: The Conflicting Effects of China’s Modernization Project on Women in Suburban Beijing.”

First-year student Lauren Halenar is the recipient of a five-year Integrative Graduate Research and Training in Evolutionary Primatology (IGERT) grant from the National Science Foundation. She is, in addition, the recipient of a CUNY Chancellor’s Fellowship.

Tina Harris received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Title VI Grant through Columbia University to study advanced Tibetan at Tibet University in Lhasa for eight weeks in Summer 2004.

Christine Hegel has won a IIE Fulbright Grant for Graduate Research Abroad and an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The grants will fund her research (“Law-mindedness and Social Mobility in Egypt”) from January 2005 through December 2005. Christine currently holds a CUNY Instructional Technology fellowship at Staten Island College.

Lynn Horridge received a Spring 2004 fellowship to attend the Rockefeller Human Security Seminar.

Rebecca Jabbour has been awarded a 2004-2005 Individual Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to aid research on her dissertation, “Postcranial Skeletal Diversity and Ecomorphology of African Apes.” Rebecca was the recipient of two 2003-2004 grants for her dissertation work: a Sigma Xi grant-in-aid of research and a L.S.B. Leakey Foundation general grant.

Hannah Jopling was the recipient of the District of Columbia’s 2003 Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. Hannah’s project, the Sidwell Friends School Archaeology Project, won in the Public Archaeology category, in recognition of “outstanding achievement in contributing to the understanding of past cultural behavior, including, but not limited to the recovery, analysis and/or in-place preservation of archaeological resources” (from the Awards press release). The five-year project involved Sidwell students from the fifth grade and their science instructor, working at a site behind an early 19th century building on the campus.

So-Youn Kang was the recipient of a 2004 Summer Research Fellowship from the Graduate Center’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies.

Graduate Patty Kelly (PhD 2002) was a CUNY Honors College Postdoctoral fellow at Baruch College during the 2003-2004 academic year.

Graduate Anru Lee (PhD 1998) was a 2003 recipient of a Richard Carley Hunt fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for “In the Name of Harmony and Prosperity: Labor and Gender Politics in Taiwan’s Economic Restructuring.” She is a member of the anthropology faculty of John Jay College.

Joshua Linder received three 2004-2005 grants to fund his research in Cameroon: a Wildlife Conservation Society Research Fellowship Program grant; a Conservation International Primate Action Fund grant; and a grant from the American Society of Primatologists. The title of his project is “Differential Vulnerability of Primates to Hunting in Korup National Park, Cameroon: Implications for Primate Conservation.”

Lara Kusnetzky was the 2003-2004 winner of The Graduate Center’s Monroe Carell, Jr., Dissertation Fellowship for “Stories of Tin City: Histories of the Present in Gejiu, China.”

Ilisa Lam was the recipient of a 2003 University Student Senate Scholarship.

Laure Levine was the winner of a 2003-2004 Department of Education Fulbright Hays award for “Defending Children’s Rights: UNICEF, NGOs, and Palestinian Refugee Children in Jordan.”

Ruth Maher has won a fellowship from The American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Thor Thors Memorial Fund to support research, data collection, and dissertation writing at the Icelandic Institute of Archaeology from September 2004 through August 2005.

Congratulations to Erin Martineau, winner of The Graduate Center’s 2004-2005 David Spitz Dissertation Fellowship in Social Sciences. The fellowship is named in honor of the late Professor Spitz, who was a faculty member in the Political Science program. Erin is a CUNY College Writing Fellow at New York Technical College, a fellowship she began in 2003.

Recent graduate Kieran McNulty (PhD 2003) was the recipient of a grant in Summer 2004 from the National Science Foundation to aid field research on fossil primates in Romania.

Tara Peburn is the recipient of multiple grants to support her research in the U.S., Europe and Africa on “Cranial Architecture of the Papionini: Analyses of Structural Variation, and its Functional and Phylogenetic Implications.” The grants are a Wenner Gren Foundation Research grant, a Sigma Xi grant, and a Leakey Foundation grant.

Claudine Pied was a Research Assistant in 2003-2004, working with Professor Leith Mullings (co-PI) on a grant to study social justice philanthropy. The study, directed by Graduate Center Professor of Sociology Juan Battle, is part of a larger study of social justice philanthropy in five countries/regions of the world, funded by the Ford Foundation.

First-year student Jolie Preau is the recipient of the five-year (2004-2009) Franziska Dorner Fellowship from The Graduate Center.

Congratulations to Andrea Queeley, winner of the 2004-2005 President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship from The Graduate Center. Andrea is also a CUNY Writing Fellow, a post she began in Fall 2004.

Gerald Scharfenberger is the recipient of two grants: a New Jersey Historical Commission Mini-grant for C-14 testing, and a Battlefield Restoration and Volunteer Organization grant to support his research project, “The Old Scots’ Burying Ground: An Ethnoarchaeological study of New Jersey’s First Presbyterian Congregation.”

Graduate Jonathan Shannon (PhD 2001) was the recipient of a 2003-2004 Fulbright scholarship to Syria and Morocco. Jonathan is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Hunter College.

Congratulations to Rachel Sponzo, winner of the 2004-2005 Ralph Bunche Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate Center. The fellowship was established in honor of the late Nobel Laureate by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

Vikki Stone was the winner of a 2003-2004 fellowship/sponsored internship with the ALTRIA Group of The Graduate Center’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.

Mary Taylor was a Fulbright-IIE Scholar for the 2003-2004 academic year, pursuing doctoral fieldwork in Hungary. Her project title is “The Hungarian Dancehouse Movement: Politics, Culture, and the Question of Europe.”

Jose Vasquez was awarded a 2003 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for Minorities, which provides three years of funding over a five-year period. Jose’s interests include complementary and alternative medicine in the U.S. and Japan.

Graduate Bea Vidacs (PhD 2002) is a 2004 recipient of the highly prestigious Richard Carley Hunt grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In addition, she was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Grant and joined the Cultural Anthropology Department of the Eötvös Lorand University of Budapest, Hungary, for the Fall 2004 semester.

David Vine has been awarded a 2004 Kennedy Library Research Grant in support of his project, “Diego Garcia: The Creation of a Military Base.” In 2003 he was the recipient of a Mellon Foundation grant through CUNY’s Inter-University Consortium on Security and Humanitarian Affairs at the Ralph Bunche Institute. 2003 was the grant’s inaugural year.

Gerard Weber was the winner of a 2003-2004 Department of Education Fulbright Hays award for “Health and Illness in Romania: Older Men and Women’s Experiences with National Health Care Reform in Galati, Southern Moldavia.”

Congratulations to Jimmy Weir, winner of a 2004 Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to support his research on “Making Everyday Life in the Context of Conflict: Practices of Chess, Gardening and Music in Herat, Afghanistan.” He was, in addition, a 2003 David L. Boren Language Student fellow.

Danielle Whittaker is the recent recipient of multiple grants including a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for “Evolutionary Genetics of Kloss’s Gibbons (Hylobates Klossii): Systematics, Phylogeography, and Conservation.” She has also been awarded a 2004 Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation Grant for “Identifying and Conserving the Genetic Diversity of the Kloss’s Gibbon While Balancing the Nature of the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia and the Culture of its People.”

Graduate Jim Woollett (PhD 2003) was awarded a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in 2004 by the Leverhulme Trust (UK) for the project “Landscapes Circum Landnám” in the Faroes and Iceland.

First-year student Sarah Yahm is the recipient of two prestigous Graduate Center fellowships: a Provost’s fellowship and an Altman fellowship. Congratulations!

Janette Yarwood is the recipient of a David L. Boren Fellowship for the 2004 academic year to support her dissertation research on “Coloured Identities in Cape Town, South Africa.” She was a selected participant in the 2004 international graduate student summer seminar “Interrogating the African Diaspora” (“Imagining the African Diaspora: Genealogy and Social Constructions”) at the Florida International University in North Miami.

Gabriela Zamorano was the recipient of a grant from the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, from August 2000 through August 2004.

Congratulations to Jarrett Zigon, winner of The Graduate Center’s 2004-2005 Carell Dissertation Fellowship for students of high academic merit.

Students and alumni, we'd love to know your news! Please contact with any updates regarding your latest activities.

PhD Program in Anthropology - The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309
phone: 212.817.8005 fax: 212.817.1501 email:

This departmental publication supplements the official Bulletin of The Graduate School as well as the current Graduate Center Student Handbook and "Announcement of Courses."