We are happy to announce the final selection of students for the 2013-14 India China Institute Student Fellows. The Starr Foundation supports ICI Student Research Fellowships, which provides a $3,000 study/research grant to support an independent study project or to defray the cost of attending a New School Program in India, China, or the Himalaya region. Applications are accepted every fall for the next group of Student Fellows. A list of all past Student Fellows can be found here. Congratulation to the next group of Student Fellows, who are listed below.
Mikaela Kvan is currently pursuing a BS in Urban Design at Parsons, The New School for Design. She is interested in examining the global framework of economic development through the garment manufacturing industry. Through the ICI travel grant, Mikaela will look at China’s labor laws and use China as a baseline to evaluate the growth of Cambodia’s garment industry through the voices of women who work at various levels throughout the garment manufacturing process. The research will assess the physical effects of the growth of this industry on emotional outcomes in identity and personal expression, and will take place in Shenzhen, China and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Carolina Coviello is majoring in Strategic Design and Management at Parsons, The New School for Design. She is deeply interested in observing the business dynamics around the world, especially in emerging countries like China. Carolina’s research will look to gain a better understanding of the impacts of globalization in China’s goods market. During her summer experience in China, she would like to explore first-hand and define the improvement in Chinese labor standards. Furthermore, she would like to explore how this process has impacted both the manufacturing market and the relationship between China and the international companies, like Adidas, which have outsourced there.
Tomas Uribe is a M.A. student in Media Studies at The New School. With the ICI travel grant, Tomas will conduct research on music as a tool for empowering youth in order to analyze and evaluate the applicability and relevance of music education in the lives of at-risk youth based on two case studies in Mumbai (Mewsic) and New Delhi (Music Basti). In order to reach this goal, Tomas will create multi-media pieces that will be posted on the website or blog which will be developed, for further reference for other countries.
Joseph Wheeler is a MFA student in the Transdisciplinary Design program at Parsons, The New School. With the ICI travel grant, Joseph will engage in discourse with women working toward gender equality externally (via national reform) and internally (via community reform) in India. He will explore how the Uniform Civil Code is understood by both sides, the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions to this complex problem, as well as the lived ramifications of discriminatory Personal Law and real world persecution of religious minorities. Joseph will work with Women’s Rights groups such as Feminists India to set up in-person interviews with activists and community members, and reach out to some of the key voices in this debate.
Tim Rosenkranz is a PhD candidate in Sociology at The New School for Social Research. With the support of the ICI travel grant, Tim will explore how the nation-state of India is reproduced as a commoditized tourist destination; and what are the emerging conflicts of such an effort of the nation-state as actor of both the public interest and private enterprise. Through this project, Tim’s research will sketch out the emerging relational triangle between the tourist as audience, the private industry as part of the tourist destination India, and the national government agency as acting both in the public interest and as private enterprise.
Marina Kaneti is pursing her PhD in Political Theory and Comparative Politics at the New School for Social Research. Marina is interested in exploring various intersections between the politics of urbanization and business, globalization and migration. Marina will use the ICI travel grant to travel to Hong Kong, Guandong, and Shanghai to conduct research of archival collections at several locations. This research, part of a broader PhD Dissertation work, will examine the links between migration and business at the end of the nineteenth – early twentieth century. Marina will analyze the Chinese business companies’ trade negotiations with the United States business and government elites; and the Chinese business community facilitation of migration flows to the United States.
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