Two doctoral students affiliated with the Kellogg Institute have won prestigious national awards, including the Fulbright Study/Research Grant and the USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship.

Catherine Brix (PhD in Literature Program) will be conducting PhD dissertation research on a Fulbright in Chile, where she will be based at Universidad de Chile in Santiago.

“My dissertation, ‘Transformative (Re)inscriptions: Traumatic Memories and Testimonio in Chile,’ looks at a testimonial narrative, ‘El inferno,’ by a former political prisoner turned collaborator of the Pinochet dictatorship, Luz Arce,” she says. Faculty Fellow María Rosa Olivera-Williams serves as her dissertation advisor.

Angela Lederach (anthropology and peace studies) is conducting ongoing anthropological research on the participation of youth in social movements and peacebuilding in Colombia. She has received both a Fulbright and a USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship to support her work.

“My research is focused on what motivates widespread youth participation in community-based peace activism, and how their participation enables them to imagine a possible future for themselves,” she says. In particular, she is looking at the role of intergenerational solidarity in the Movimiento Pacífico de la Alta Montaña (Peaceful Movement of the Alta Montaña). (More on her research here.)

Both the Fulbright and USAID programs are highly selective. The Fulbright US Student Program offers research, study and teaching opportunities in over 140 countries to recent graduates and graduate students. 

The USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship is administered through a partnership between six American universities and USAID’s Global Development Lab. At Notre Dame, the USAID/Notre Dame Global Development Fellowships are managed by the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD).

The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the University of Notre Dame’s new Keough School of Global Affairs, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars and students from across the University and around the world that promotes research, provides educational opportunities, and builds linkages related to two topics critical to our world—democracy and human development.