Pardee Center Announces 2019 Graduate Summer Fellows

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future is pleased to announce its 2019 Graduate Summer Fellows. These seven outstanding Boston University graduate students represent six different academic departments.

Starting May 28th, the Graduate Summer Fellows will spend 10 weeks at the Pardee House developing research papers to be considered for publication as part of the Pardee Center’s publication series. In addition, Summer Fellows will participate in special programs designed to advance interdisciplinary research and learning and will interact with Pardee Center staff, Faculty Research Fellows and Associates, Visiting Fellows, and post-docs.

The class of 2019 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellows includes:

Ahmet Utku Akbiyik, doctoral student, Political Science
He will study whether the economic development provided by infrastructural investments can decrease people’s likelihood of being recruited by insurgent groups, focusing specifically on dam construction and the recruitment level of PKK, the Kurdish insurgent group, in eastern Turkey.

Kevin Boueri, doctoral student, Anthropology
He will assess the complications of ecotourism projects and community-based conservation in sectarian or post-conflict societies, using the Lebanon Mountain Trail as a case study.

Rosana Hernández, doctoral student, Romance Studies
She will study the ways in which Hispanic literature represents the environmental impacts of extractive industries to better understand discourses on sustainable development and climate change, focusing on five Peruvian and Spanish novels.

Kate Mitchell, doctoral student, Public Health
She will analyze ways to achieve respectful maternity care in upper middle-income countries to address the life and death consequences of disrespectful, neglectful, and abusive care within health facilities.

Heather Mooney, doctoral student, Sociology
She will study how nation-states respond to collective grief and mourning, focusing on Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, apartheid in South Africa, the HIV/AIDs epidemic in the United States, and the 2011 Norway Attacks.

Dat Nguyen, doctoral student, Anthropology – Appleton Schneider Fellow*
He will analyze ways that state policies can take into account Buddhist knowledge and practices to develop a more comprehensive framework for improving youth well-being in Vietnam.

Nicholas Ray, doctoral student, Biology
He will develop a predictive model to estimate how much oyster aquaculture can reduce excess nitrogen in coastal ecosystems, potentially allowing for inclusion of oyster aquaculture in coastal nutrient management policies.

More information about the Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellows Program and previous summer fellows is available here.

*Each year, the Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow who is closest to completing his or her doctoral degree is designated as the Appleton Schneider Fellow in honor of BU Alumnus Appleton Schneider, who provided a bequest to the Pardee Center endowment to support the Graduate Summer Fellows program.