We are excited to announce the recipients of the Starr Foundation Student Fellows grant for 2017.
This is the tenth cohort of students who are awarded a Travel and Research Grant towards their academic engagement on India and China. Students undergo a competitive application and interview process and commit to conducting field research in India or China for a minimum of three weeks during the spring or summer.
The list of the 2017 Finalists is below. Congratulations to all of them!!
Maria Radulescu is an undergraduate student in The School of Drama. Her project is entitled “Tracking the Evolution of Theatre Practices in India”. She will explore the influence of traditional and classical theatre of India on contemporary theatre practice.
Monise Silva is a Ph.D. student majoring in Public and Urban Policy at NSPE. Monise will study the socio-spatial dynamics of Indian mega-cities. Monise comes from Curitiba, Brazil, and has been studying the working of socio-spatial dynamics in Brazil in relation to the issues of intra-urban inequality and social exclusion. She conducted similar research in Africa. The ICI grant would allow her to compare and contrast the urban experiences of Delhi with her previous work on megacities in the other two continents, and to further explore alternative categories of urban analysis to strengthen the discourse on the urban condition.
Isabella Kazanecki is an undergraduate student at Eugene Lang College. The topic of her project is “Sacred Practices and the Environment”. She will explore the physical manifestations of religion and analyze globalization’s impact on the way people worship. With the help of interviews and photography, Isabella aims to get a grounded understanding of climate change and its effects on cultures in the Himalayas.
Amanda Astorga is a student in M.F.A. Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons. She comes from Chile, where she worked in public health care services after her college study. Drawing from her previous work experiences, she has grown a major interest in exploring gender equality in health care system. Amanda will look into gender equality in India, since India has been rated the country with worst gender equality statistics. Amanda hopes to obtain the answer to her question—how the concept of gender equality is perceived in Indian culture and what is its impact on women’s health care?
Danny Dang is a senior student in Design and Technology at Parsons. His project is “BeyondABC”, a game designed by two former Starr Travel Award recipients, Kate Wallace and Ker Thao, and himself. “BeyondABC” is a game aimed at providing Indian youth with the safety skills they need to protect themselves from human trafficking. As a core team member of BeyondABC, Danny wishes to go to India and contact people who have first-hand experiences with human trafficking, as well as work with GOAL India, an organization that helps youth leaders in underprivileged communities to develop critical thinking skills.
Kaartikeya Bajpai is an M.A. student in Creative Writing at NSPE. Curious about the questions why Chinese literature doesn’t widely reach the West and vice versa, Kaartikeya’s project is to compile a “Contemporary Chinese Literature and the Global Reader”. As the chief editor of The Bombay Review, a bi-monthly international literary magazine in India, he accumulated great experiences to help him research into the literature world in China. He aspires to generate a deeper analysis of readership and popularity of certain Chinese books.