Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliates Win Fulbright Awards

Four Kellogg doctoral student affiliates advised by Institute faculty fellows have won prestigious Fulbright Study/Research Awards to conduct research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Katie Comeau, a fourth-year PhD student in sociology, will conduct nine months of research and data collection in Jamaica, where she will be affiliated with the University of West Indies in Mona. Her work will inform her dissertation.

“My project, “Faith-Based Organizations and Cross-cultural Engagement in Jamaica,” focuses on how the international context influences an NGO’s ability to create cross-cultural ties with beneficiaries,” she says.

“In particular, I'll be looking at how religious organizations draw on religious ideas of what constitutes ‘help’ and how that translates in the international context.”

Faculty Fellow Lyn Spillman serves as the chair of Comeau’s dissertation committee. 

Leslie MacColman, a fourth-year PhD student in sociology and peace studies who conducted preliminary dissertation research last year on a Kellogg Graduate Research Grant, will return to Argentina to continue her study of the impact of police reforms on police culture.

“The City of Buenos Aires is the epicenter of one of the most significant police reforms in Argentina's history,” MacColman says.

Using interviews and ethnographic observation, she plans to compare the trajectories of two police precincts to establish whether and how organizational changes can reduce police misconduct. The nine months of research will form the foundation for her dissertation.

“I have been working closely with several Kellogg faculty fellows—Ann Mische, Erin Metz McDonnell, and Guillermo Trejo—to hone the project,” she says, noting that she will also continue to collaborate with Visiting Fellow Hernán Flom when he returns to Argentina.

MacColman will be based at the Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IDAES) at the National University of San Martín and will collaborate with the Center for Participation for Peace and Human Rights, an NGO.

Emily Maiden, a PhD candidate in political science and peace studies, will conduct approximately ten months of fieldwork in Malawi for her dissertation project, which examines the policy implementation process designed to combat child marriage.

“I am interested in understanding what the average Malawian woman knows about her rights protected by Malawian law, what she knows about how to protect and promote her own health, and her opinions on the roles of women in Malawian society,” Maiden says. She will be working with the University of Malawi's Centre for Social Research and Malawi Matters, a nonprofit. 

Maiden gathered initial data in a February 2017 Kellogg-funded predissertation trip, collecting nearly 1,000 completed baseline surveys from women in 21 research sites across the central region of Malawi. Survey question covered a range of topics, including women’s rights, gender roles, health and HIV/AIDS, cultural practices, and Malawian law.

Faculty Fellow Jaimie Bleck cochairs Maiden’s dissertation committee.

Todd Marek, a PhD candidate in anthropology, will conduct ethnographic dissertation research at four institutions of traditional Tibetan medical practice in Qinghai Province, China, where he will be affiliated with Qinghai Nationalities University in Xining for the ten and a half months of his fieldwork.

“My research investigates the institutional reorderings of traditional Tibetan Medicine,” he says.

“I am exploring the ways that intensive state-led development on the Tibetan plateau and increasing contact with biomedicine is reflexively engaged with by Tibetan doctors and patients—and what effect this has on traditional Tibetan medical theory.”

All four members of Marek’s dissertation committee are Kellogg faculty fellows: Susan Blum, Christopher Ball, Natalie Porter, and Vania Smith-Oka.

A highly selective program, the Fulbright US Student Program offers research, study and teaching opportunities in over 140 countries to recent graduates and graduate students. 

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.