The Duke University Center for International and Global Studies (DUCIGS) is pleased to award 25 graduate and four undergraduate students with grants for research and other academic activities.

Each year, DUCIGS offers Graduate Awards for Research and Training awards. The grants support work on international research topics, attendance at specialized conferences, or foreign language and methods training for Duke graduate students. We also offer Undergraduate Summer Awards for Research and Academic Activities, which provide funding for full-time undergraduate students at Duke to complement their classwork with research or academic experience that involves a global or international component.

Below, we will highlight some of the winners of this year’s grant competition.  

Jing Hao Liong

Cultural Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Jing Hao Liong will spend his summer enrolled in a virtual Malay language course through the National University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

Liong hopes to improve his Malay language skills to be able to conduct in-field interviews and archival research for his dissertation project, which focuses on the experiences of manual laborers in construction sites and manufacturing plants in urban Malaysia. 

"Fluency in the Malay language is vital for my future research as an anthropologist whose field site is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Proficiency in Malay will provide me with the ability to communicate with and engage my future interlocutors in a more robust and meaningful manner," Liong said.

Camille Chanod

Camille Chanod is a Ph.D. candidate in Romance Studies, focusing her work on the sounds of French and Italian cinema in the 1970’s.

Through DUCIGS funding, Chanod will spend the summer of 2022 conducting archival research in France and Italy, particularly studying notes on scripts to understand how filmmakers, scriptwriters, and sound designers conceived the mise en scène of sound in the pre-production stage. Additionally, she will spend time visiting sound archives in Paris, Milan, and Rome.

Saisahana Subburaj

With her DUCIGS student grant, Saisahana Subburaj spent three weeks interviewing women and their families in rural Tamil Nadu, India about traditional birthing practices and their individual birthing experiences and preferences. Subburaj, an undergraduate studying Global Womens Health in Asia: Culture, History, and Power through Program II, will then compile a comprehensive academic report including her analysis and findings.

Devin Creed

Devin Creed, a second-year Ph.D. student in the History department, will spend eight weeks this summer participating in an intensive course in Bangla with the American Institute for Indian Studies in Kolkata, India.

Creed is currently developing a dissertation proposal that will examine ideologies and practices of food giving among the various famine relief committees that emerged in Bengal and North India in the 19th century. Knowledge of Bangla is essential to his project, as much of his research will be conducted in Bangla language archives.

“Achieving fluency in Bangla is essential to my success in this endeavor, because I will spend my professional life teaching Bengal’s history and visiting the region to conduct research and attend conferences,” Creed said.

Nikhita Gopisetty

Nikhita Gopisetty, a double major in Biomedical Engineering and Global Health, will travel to Mysore, Karnataka in South India this summer to conduct interviews with young adults living with diabetes in the area. Working with the Public Health Research Institute of India, her research will examine the relationships between diabetes management, experience, and overall quality of life.

Participants in the project will provide their health records and also participate in a health questionnaire to screen for depression and demographic information. The results of the study will be used to identify key pathways that negatively impact physical and mental health in this community.

With cases of type 2 diabetes on the rise in India and throughout the globe, Gopisetty hopes to contribute to the development of cost-effective, community-driven methods to promote healthier disease outcomes, physically and mentally.

Minato Sakamoto

Music Composition Ph.D. candidate Mianto Sakamoto will spend the fall 2022 semester in China conducting field recording activities and archival research related to his dissertation project, which includes a major music composition requirement.

Sakamoto will spend time exploring cities to find “mundane yet characteristic sounds” of streets, a concept he has left intentionally vague to leave room for artistic interpretation. After experimenting with various recording techniques, these in-field recordings will become two movements in his composition.

For the next round of applications, you will find updates at https://igs.duke.edu/opportunities starting next Fall 2022.