SUMMER RESEARCH REPORTS

Summer 2004 Grants Provide Varied Research Opportunities

Georgetown's Center for Latin American Studies awarded a total of $11,000 in support of Summer 2004 research. The Venezuela Program also provided a $600 summer research grant. Eleven graduate students were selected by a multidisciplinary faculty committee to receive assistance for their research in Latin America. The field research conducted by these students contributes to their overall studies and, in some cases, is an important part of their thesis research.

Christina M. Fetterhoff worked with NGOs in Quito, Ecuador that focus on globalization and foreign debt issues, as well as those that investigate human rights abuses. Her experience will lead to a research paper on the relationship between Ecuador's crisis of democracy and the implementation of poverty alleviation programs.

Also working with NGOs was Silvana Flinn, who studied how groups in Nicaragua approach the country's development and how the NGOs are impacting the democratic process.

Erin Kliewer studied non-profit, non-governmental, community-based, and grassroots organizations developed by and for women in Mexico. Her focus was on which organizations exist, who started them and why, and how the groups have influenced the local community.

Emily Gereffi conducted research on the Brazilian footwear industry. Her time in Brazil will assist her with her thesis, which is about how the Brazilian footwear industry is developing to improve its position in the global value chain.

Okezi Otovo also focused on Brazil; where, in Salvador de Bahia, she researched medical thought in response to the negative health consequences of Brazil's rapid industrialization from 1885-1935.

A third student to travel to Brazil was Mércia Santana Flannery, who researched racism and the related inequality of opportunities in Brazilian society.

Charlotte McDowell spent her summer in Argentina investigating how and why Argentine civil society mobilized in response to the political and economic crisis at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Andrew Stevenson explored how perceptions of national history, as displayed through parks and monuments, influence democratic political development in Argentina.

Roberto Pareja spent one month in Peru researching the works of, and materials related to, Abraham Valdelomar in relation to Bolivian and Peruvian intellectual and social movements of first half of the twentieth century.

Frederic Vallvé spent the summer delving into the archives of the Casa Suárez and the Archivo Histórico del Museo de la Universidad Autónoma de Bolivia to investigate the effects of the late nineteenth century rubber boom on the indigenous peoples of Bolivia.

As the recipient of the summer research grant from the Venezuela Program, Brandon Yoder spent three months in Caracas as an intern at the U.S. Embassy. While there, he researched several pro-Chávez influences on the referendum process, including the verification council, the naturalization drives, and money spent by the administration.

2001 Article & Individual Reports
2002 Article & Individual Reports
2003 Article & Individual Reports