NewsThe Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) is thrilled to announce the 2022 cohort of IDRF fellows. For 25 years, the IDRF program has partnered with the Mellon Foundation to support PhD students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences conducting dissertation research on non-US or US Indigenous cultures and societies across the world.
This class of fellows, the program’s final cohort, will include 60 graduate students conducting research across 13 disciplines—from political science and area studies to geography, education, and Native American studies—in 12 regions worldwide. Projects include research on the collection and circulation of sacred objects in early twentieth-century Haiti, cartographies of bonds and bondage in the Sahara, place-making practices in premodern Japanese literature and performance, and much more.
The IDRF program is grateful for the partnership of the Mellon Foundation, our selection committee members, evaluators, and the over 1,600 fellows whose research we’ve been proud to support. See the full list of 2022 IDRF fellows below:
Bayan Abubakr
History, Yale University
Africa
The Forty Days’ Road and the World Around It: Race, Slavery, and Society in Ottoman-Egyptian Sudan, 1821-1904
Faisal Abualhassan
History, Johns Hopkins University
Africa, Middle East & North Africa
Cartographies of Bonds and Bondage: Orienting the Sahara, 1900-1962
Sofyan Ansori
Anthropology, Northwestern University
Southeast Asia
Igniting Subjectivities: Indigenous Responses to Fires and (Anti-)fire Governance in Indonesia
Aman Banerji
Development Studies, Cornell University
South Asia
Competing Visions of Bengaluru’s ‘Global’ City: Making Land Markets along Tumakuru Highway
Adeli Block
Anthropology, University of Michigan / Ann Arbor
Middle East & North Africa
Scripting Distinction: The Social Life of Language Policy in Morocco
Sahar Bostock
History, Columbia University
Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe
Grounding Colonization: Ottoman, British, and Zionist Development in the Desert of Southern Palestine, 1830-1950
Pascale Boucicaut
Anthropology, University of California / Berkeley
North America, Western Europe
Assembling ‘Spirited’ Things: The Collection and Circulation of Haiti’s Sacred Objects in the Early Twentieth Century
Alika Bourgette
History, University of Washington
Oceania, North America
Refuge and Abundance: Puʻuhonua o Kakaʻako and Native Hawaiian Community Resilience in the Early Twentieth Century
Charles Bradley
Education, University of Virginia
Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa
Understanding Early Childhood Development in Emergencies: An Inhabited Institutionalist Analysis of Refugee Parenting Programs
Alejandra Cano
Native American Studies, University of California / Davis
Latin America
Embera Embodied Knowledge: An Eco-Cultural Archive for Stingless Honeybee Conservation, Kinship Revitalization, and Land-Stewardship
Marcos Cisneros
Art History/Architecture, University of California / Berkeley
Eurasia
Collectivism as Resource: Contemporary Kyrgyzstani Art in Global Post-Socialism
Emily Cornish
Art History/Architecture, University of Michigan / Ann Arbor
Oceania
Indigenous Women and Photography in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Kingdom of Hawaii: Tradition and Modernity through Self-Representation and Patronage
Shankar CSR
History, University of Minnesota / Twin Cities
South Asia
After the Conversion: A Social and Intellectual History of Post-Independence Marathi Anti-Caste Buddhism (1956-2002)
Constanza Dalla Porta
History, Princeton University
Latin America
Making Bones Speak: Bodies, Exhumations, and Forensic Anthropology in Argentina (1980-2010)
Victoria Davis
Literature, University of California / Los Angeles
East Asia
Michiyuki and Place-Making Practices in Premodern Japanese Literature and Performance
Mary Deleary
Art History/Architecture, University of Oklahoma
North America
A Place for Us to Sit: Making and Remembering Visual and Material Histories of Deshkan Ziibiing
Mariana Diaz Chalela
History, Yale University
Latin America
Borrowing out of Poverty: Credit, Religion, and Democracy in the Making of Rural Colombia (1931-1985)
Dinko Hanaan Dinko
Geography, University of Denver
Africa
“Hydrofeminities” and the Making of Womanhood: Visualizing Water Politics and Gendered Water Rights in Semiarid Ghana using Participatory Drone-Based Mapping
Breeanna Elliott
History, Yale University
Africa
A Spirited Pharmacopeia: Mobile Malagasy Spirits and Medical Knowledge Production in the Western Indian Ocean
Christian Espinosa Schatz
Anthropology, Yale University
Latin America
Weathered Livelihoods and Mayan Migration: Climate Change in Guatemala’s Western Highlands
Ana Gabriella Fasold Bergés
History, New York University
Caribbean
“Contentious Land”: Agrarian Reform, Development, and Expertise in the Dominican Republic, 1961-1966
S.E. Freeman
Geography, University of California / Berkeley
Africa
Quantifying Mobility: An Ethnography of Humanitarian Data Collection in South Sudan
Tomás Gold
Sociology, University of Notre Dame
Latin America
The Political Strategies of Free-Market Think Tanks in Argentina and Chile
Alice Gorton
History, Columbia University
Western Europe, North America, Oceania
Three Acres and a Plough: Agricultural Imperialism in Britain’s Settler Empire, 1873-1914
Phurwa Gurung
Geography, University of Colorado / Boulder
South Asia
Reordering Highland Territories: State-Building, Indigeneity and Multispecies Worldmaking in the Himalaya
Robin Hartanto Honggare
Art History/Architecture, Columbia University
Western Europe, Southeast Asia
Building Commodities: Environments of Colonial Plantation in East Sumatra, 1869-1942
Salwa Hoque
Communications, New York University
South Asia
Law and Digitization: Tracing Modern Epistemologies and Power
Muhammad Osama Imran
Anthropology, University of Minnesota / Twin Cities
South Asia
Breaths of Intimacy: Haunted Subjectivities and Free Submission in The Sufi Practice of Zikr
Mohit Kaycee
Religion, Columbia University
South Asia
Imprints of Place and Memory: Dalit Pedagogical Experiments and the Quest for Re-Habitation in Rural India
Hae Seo Kim
Anthropology, University of California / Irvine
East Asia
Making Outer Spaces on Naro Island, South Korea
Garam Kwon
Anthropology, The City University of New York / The Graduate Center
Western Europe, Middle East & North Africa
Andalusian Waterworld and the Formation of Internationalism across the Strait of Gibraltar (1945-1956)
Joanna Lee
Area and Cultural Studies, Columbia University
East Asia, Middle East & North Africa
Visions of Emancipation: Islam, Socialism, and Third World Internationalism in the People’s Republic of China from the Cold War to the Present
Vladislav Lilić
History, Vanderbilt University
Eastern Europe
The Laboratory of Statehood: Imperial Law, Quasi-Sovereignty, and International Order in the Balkans, 1856-1912
Margarita Maria Martinez-Osorio
History, Indiana University Bloomington
Latin America
“Our Land Was a Work of Art”: Peasant Protest, Gender, and Utopias of Land in the Colombian Caribbean, 1910-1980
David McCaskey
History, University of California / Riverside
Southeast Asia
National Waters: Marine Science and the State at the Vietnamese National Institute of Oceanography, 1920-1975
Ashley McDermott
Anthropology, University of Michigan / Ann Arbor
Eurasia
The Production of Endangerment: Language Socialization, Shift, and Discourses of Kyrgyz Loss in Post-Soviet Bishkek
Bita Mousavi
History, New York University
Middle East & North Africa
The Parasitic State: Nature, Wealth, and the Iranian Nation, 1960-2000
Comfort Tamanda Mtotha
History, University of Michigan / Ann Arbor
Africa, Western Europe
Collecting Malawi: A Socio-Political History of Entangled Ethnographic Objects in Museums of Malawi and National Museums Scotland, 1892-1994
Olga Nechaeva
Literature, University of Pennsylvania
Eurasia, Africa
The Gorky Literary Institute: Creative Writing under Socialism
Shantanu Nevrekar
Anthropology, Stanford University
South Asia
Banking on Community? Cooperative Banks, Caste, and Politics in Small-Town India
Yoli Ngandali
Archaeology, University of Washington
North America
Meaning is in the Making: Tribal Sovereignty, Museum Collections, and Indigenous Art Revitalization
Ambel Parodi
Anthropology, University of California / Los Angeles
Latin America
Gendering Justice on the Chilean Courts: Institutional Developments, Legal Actors’ Practices and Women’s Access to Justice
Paige Pendarvis
History, University of Pennsylvania
Western Europe
Levels of Living: A New Intellectual History of the Standard of Living in the French Empire, 1890s-1960s
Richard Raber
History, Indiana University Bloomington
Africa
Forged along the Border: Apartheid’s Shock Troops, Inter-Racial Intimacy and Shifting Subjectivities in Cold War Southern Africa
Chao Ren
History, University of Michigan / Ann Arbor
Western Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia
Frontier Futures: Corporation, Law, and Plural Society in Two Asian Oilfields, 1886-1940
Sarah Eleazar Sadiq
Anthropology, University of Texas / Austin
South Asia
The Social Life of Toxicity: Contamination, Remediation, and Division in Peri-Urban Lahore, Pakistan
Parag Saikia
Anthropology, University of North Carolina / Chapel Hill
South Asia
Life of Incomplete Infrastructure: Hydropower and the Unfinished Makings of India’s Future Powerhouse
Ecem Saricayir
Art History/Architecture, Cornell University
Eurasia
Architecture and Sovereignty in the South Caucasus, 1877-1955
Jamil Sbitan
History, Columbia University
Middle East & North Africa
Intimate Crises: Prostitution, Sexual Science, and Queer History in Egypt,1834-2001
Tim Schuetz
Anthropology, University of California / Irvine
East Asia, North America
Building Petro-Public Knowledge: Transnational Environmental Activism after the Shale Gas Boom
Xinlei Sha
Anthropology, Cornell University
Africa
Visualizing Intimacy: Sex Work and Race in between Kenya and China
AJ Solovy
History, University of California / Berkeley
Western Europe
Nazis After Hitler: An Experiential History of Former SS Members in the Postwar World, 1950-2010
Pamudu Tennakoon
Art History/Architecture, Brown University
South Asia, Southeast Asia
Decolonization and Ruination: Rewriting Colonial Architecture in Contemporary Colombo and Singapore
Niu Teo
History, University of Chicago
East Asia
Pig People: An Interspecies Tale of Chimerical Emergence
Darren Wan
History, Cornell University
Western Europe, Southeast Asia
Documenting Belonging: Citizenship Claims and Bureaucratic Encounters in British Southeast Asia
Caroline White-Nockleby
Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Latin America
A Resource, an Engine, or an Industry of Its Own: Futurities of Renewable Energy Storage in the Atacama Desert, Chile
Keenan Wilder
Sociology, Brown University
Middle East & North Africa
Oligarchy with an Iron Fist: Union Autonomy and Cooptation in the Middle East and North Africa
Chang Xu
History, Washington University in St Louis
East Asia
Medicine on the March: Military Institutions, Medical Networks, and the Qing Empire, 1644-1800
Farah Zahra
Ethnomusicology/Music, The City University of New York / The Graduate Center
Middle East & North Africa
Wound-ing Together is Celebrating Together: Community Archival Practices of the Iraqi Maqam in Wartime Iraq
Yasir Zaidan
Political Science, University of Washington
Africa
Contested Waterfronts: Port Development and Insecurity in the Red Sea