We are excited to announce the recipients of the Starr Foundation Student Fellows grant for 2019.
This is the twelfth 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.
Brief biographies of the Student Fellows can be found below. Congratulations to all of them!
2019 Student Fellows
Aman Bardia
Aman Bardia is currently pursuing MSc. in Economics at the New School for Social Research. His research is focused on the history of uneven and combined development of capitalism in South Asia with an emphasis on the political economy of the rise of the Hindu right. He has a background in philosophy, theater and political organizing.
Isobel Chiang
Isobel Chiang is currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at the New School for Social Research. Her writing and research focus on the sociology of food — that is, how food is a lens through which we can critically and creatively examine race, migration, religion, gender, and climate change. This summer, she will be reporting on the Chinese diaspora living in Kolkata, India, looking specifically at Hakka food culture.
Meihan Hu
Meihan Hu is a junior student in BFA Fashion Design program in Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York. She specializes in Supply chains studies, Social entrepreneurship, Political economy and Asian cultural studies. Her research includes, but not limit to biological-based tricking filter system for textile industrial waste water, multinational fast fashion brands’ supply chain management and improvement, import and export goods from developing country to developed country. She was rewarded the gold prize from “Scholastic Art & Writing Awards” and her work was exhibited in different venues in New York and Washington D.C.
Yang Allen
Yang Li Allen is a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Politics, The New School for Social Research. Her dissertation focuses on Chinese rural governance, which examines the relationship between land ownership and local public goods provision. Yang will be using the India-China Institute Starr Research Grant to conduct the pilot phase of her study, where she plans to immerse herself in two Ningbo (Zhejiang province) rural villages. Yang’s research interests include rural governance, urbanization, special economic zones, and East Asian politics.
Collin McClain
Collin McClain is an undergraduate student at the New School for Public Engagement, pursuing a degree in the Bachelors Program for Adults and Transfer Students. His project titled ‘Indian Co-op Documentary SEWA,’ will be to create a documentary about the Self-Employed Women’s Assocaition in India. His field research will be with 15 co-ops across the Indian state of Gujarat. It is his hope that this documentary can be used as an advocacy tool for SEWA. His documentary will stay away from being structured as a travel log and focus on the stories that the women themselves wish to tell. It will be a co-designed video with the managing director of SEWA.
Luke McCusker
Luke McCusker, an MFA student at Parsons, proposes a project entitled ‘Heidegger and The Upanishads.’ His project will examine the visual outcomes of the intersections and tensions between Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Islam in India, and the overlaps and continuities between the metaphysical presuppositions of Martin Heidegger and the theophilosophical propositions of the Upanishads. Luke’s summer field research will follow preliminary textual study and will allow him to engage with a variety of music, poetry, art, and architecture. Ultimately, he will suggest ways for Western artists to understand how metaphysics is made manifest in art objects not only in the familiar visual and philosophical traditions of the West, but in both related and distinct visual and philosophical traditions in the East.