2023 Grant Recipients
Movement Matters: Global Body in Conflict (Dance)
Lida Winfield, Christal Brown, Laurel Jenkins, Karima Borni, Meshi Chavez, Michael Abbatiello, Tiffany Wilbur
In 2023, the Dance Department hosted six artist residencies to explore conflict as an embodied experience. The three guiding questions for this research project were: (1) how does embodiment and creativity impact our engagement with a complex topic? (2) can embodiment and creativity be tools for facilitating understanding across difference? and (3) can the practice of embodiment and creativity generate increased empathy? For videos and images, click here or visit Lida Winfield’s webpage here. Download the file below for a summary presentation.
Global Body in Conflict 2023 CT Presentation
Global Body in Conflict 2023 CT Report
Feminist Studies vs. Feminist Activism (Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies)
Carly Thomsen and Laurie Essig
Feminist, Queer, and Trans Studies scholars are increasingly attacked for espousing what conservatives call “gender ideology,” an ostensibly subversive set of ideas meant to destroy traditional gender roles and to corrupt children. Meanwhile, Feminist, Queer, and Trans Studies scholars are being chastised by activists and practitioners for pushing back against the very ideas about sex, gender, and the body that have become commonsense among liberals and progressives. This project began as a way to examine the conflicting epistemologies at play among Feminist, Queer, and Trans Studies scholars and related activists. Ultimately, we sought to outline the value of academic scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the body for social justice movements as a way to begin to transform these deep conflicts.
Thomsen and Essig 2023 CT Report
Adding North Korea Case Study to Strategic Empathy Project (James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies)
James Lamson
This research project, first funded in 2022, added collaborators and a new case study in 2023. Below, find a brief summary of the 2023 efforts. For a longer narrative of the research project, please see the “2022 Grant Recipients” page of this website here.
Indigenous People vs Decarbonization? Exploring and overcoming conflicts between mining for clean technology and Native rights (International Environmental Policy)
Lyuba Zarsky, Rachel Herring, and Keaton Sandeman
The rise in domestic mineral procurement has reignited historic conflicts between the Federal Government and Indigenous peoples over Tribal sovereignty. This study utilizes a Conflict Transformation framework to investigate the structural roots of mining conflicts and their impacts on Tribal Nations. These conflicts are rooted in patterns of environmental degradation, colonialism, and broken promises to Tribal communities. Strengthening environmental regulations, improving Tribal consultation, and commencing a long-term Truth and Reconciliation process are possible ways toward more constructive relations.
Energy Research and Social Science 2024 article
‘One Bite and All is Forgiven’: Paths to Gastro-Diplomacy and Conciliatory Foodways in Cyprus and Turkey (History, Food Studies)
Febe Armanios
This project explored contentious and comparative food traditions between different ethno-religious communities in Cyprus and Turkey. It examined how food conflicts, gastronationalism, and varied efforts at “gastrodiplomacy” may reveal windows for political and cultural reconciliation in these conflict and post-conflict locales. The author observed firsthand how culinary traditions can serve as powerful vehicles for fostering understanding and reconciliation in post-conflict societies, while underscoring the complex interplay between food, identity, and politics in the region.
A Better Bargain: Transforming Conflict Negotiation Processes Between Workers and Management (Sociology)
Jamie McCallum
Rural Vermont Community Responses to Claims of Anthropogenic Climate Change (Anthropology)
Marybeth Eleanor Nevins
Flowing Toward Peace: Opportunities and Obstacles for Transforming Water Conflicts through Decentralized, On-site Water Production (International Environmental Policy)
Jeff Langholz
Droughts, climate change, population growth, rate increases, and other factors have led to water conflicts in many parts of the world, including the U.S. West. Current water infrastructure in California and elsewhere relies mostly on large-scale, centralized storage and conveyance systems. These massive networks of reservoirs, pumps and pipes offer several advantages but also contribute to significant social, economic and environmental conflicts. To what extent could we reduce water-related conflicts worldwide through more decentralized, locally controlled approaches to water supply?
The Roots of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India (Political Science)
Ajay Verghese and Roberto Foa
This project has sought to undertake data collection, surveys, and qualitative fieldwork in India to understand the roots of Hindu-Muslim conflict and how religious violence has affected two Indian cities over time: Mumbai and Mysore. Both were historically violent, whereas today Mumbai remains violent and Mysore has become a city of peace. India has one of the largest Muslim populations anywhere in the world, and recurrent communal conflict has already split apart the world’s largest democracy once before.
Perspective-Taking in Conflict Transformation (Psychology)
Suzanne Gurland
Interpersonal conflict is an inevitable part of human relationships. One way that people address conflict, and potentially transform it, is through perspective-taking – that is, viewing the situation from the point of view of the other, discerning the other’s beliefs, preferences, and feelings. This study aimed to address two key parts of the link between perspective-taking and conflict transformation that remain under-studied. One is the question of “what matters” in perspective-taking. Is it the regularity with which interactants take each other’s perspective, or perhaps the accuracy with which they do so? The other is the question of how each interactant’s perspective-taking affects that of the other and affects the developing relationship between them. Knowing whether and how perspective-taking helps us use conflicts to build better relationships can move us closer to effective interventions for transforming conflict.
Host Community Impacts of Study Centers Abroad: Transaction, Extraction, Transformation (International Education Management)
David Wick