Meet Graduate Travel Grant Winners

Vicky Kelberer

Five students have been awarded the second annual Pardee School Travel Grants, an initiative of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.

Grants are awarded via a competitive process, which encourages students to undertake path-breaking research around the world in order to further the Pardee School motto of Advancing Human Progress.

The 2015 Pardee School Travel Grant Winners are:

  • Sergio Medina, MA in International Relations: “I will travel to Argel and Oran (Algeria) to study the political system and electoral processes during the last three decades in this country, and visit the Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines that is part of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. I am honored to receive this grant and grateful for the support that the Pardee School of Global Studies is offering me. This is a great opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the Algerian society and conduct field research that will greatly enhance my Master’s thesis. This will be undoubtedly a great experience, and I want to make the most of it.”
  • Vicky Kelberer, MA in International Relations: “This summer, I am traveling to Geneva, Istanbul, and Beirut to conduct research on the Syrian refugee crisis and the UNHCR’s approach to urban refugees, with the goal of reassessing urban refugee policy in the Middle East. The travel grant from the Pardee School will allow me to gain crucial insights from and build relationships with practitioners who are responding to the refugee crisis on the ground. The Grant will also enable me to meet with Syrian refugees themselves, to include their perspectives on how and why urban refugee policies do or do not function, and what can be done to improve them.”
  • Esther Austin, MA in International Relations and International Communication: “I will be traveling to the Saharawi refugee camps in Algeria and staying there a month conducting interviews with the refugees living in the camps both adults and children. I am looking at nation branding and nationalism in a refugee context. I am looking at the differences between generations. The camps have been there for 40 years and many children have never lived in their country–the Western Sahara. I will also be traveling to the Western Sahara to interview members of the Polisario Front as well. I feel grateful for having won the grant.  This grant will allow me to interview a larger group of refugees.”
  • Maddie Powell, MA in International Relations and Religion: “I will be traveling to Bunda, Tanzania to study transnational Methodist networks. My research project interrogates the nature of the global Methodist church, and is particularly concerned with the relationship between the United Methodist Church and African Independent Methodist churches, such as the Tanzanian Methodist Church. During my time in Bunda I will be interviewing a family of Americans who have been working as missionaries in Tanzania for more than ten years and are at the center of a controversy between the United Methodist Church and the Tanzanian Methodist Church. I’ll also be traveling to rural Tanzanian churches throughout the northwest region of Tanzania to interview Tanzanian Methodist bishops about the situation of the so-called global Methodist church.”
  • Rachel Paiste, MA in International Relations and Religion: “My thesis looks at if, and how, the peace agreement at Dayton is hindering Bosnian growth. The failure of the Accords has been well documented in the academic world but to my knowledge, no one has gone back to the original negotiators and enforcers to find out what, if anything, they think went wrong, and how to possibly correct those inefficiencies. I plan to travel to Bosnia and Serbia to interview some of the people who were part of the negotiations at Dayton to find out where there is room for improvement and what changes could jump start the region’s economy. I’ll also go to California to access the archives of Warren Christopher, who was Secretary of State at the time of the Dayton Agreement.”

All students will undertake their research travel in 2016. Congratulations to all awarded students!