Institute for Regional and International Studies
Olayinka Olagbegi-Adegbite is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Comparative and International Education, and a minor in Curriculum and Instruction. She is a Nigerian whose academic sojourn in the United Stated started in 2007 when she was selected as one of the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants …
Biography Kweku Opoku-Agyemang, a student in Development Studies, spent his National Service working for the Ghanaian Ministry of Education. He developed an interest in debates about whether globalization meant the eclipse of the informal economy which sustained the livelihoods of most Ghanaians. After obtaining his Masters in Economics, he revisited Ghana in 2008 as has …
Biography Alex Paradowski is a PhD student in the Department of History. Focusing on modern Polish history, her research scrutinizes the role of gender and sexuality in the process of state formation. Her dissertation seeks to examine how the Polish state, in its various iterations and through its experts and institutions, sought to construct and …
Biography Kaden Paulson-Smith is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science with an African Studies Minor and specializing in comparative politics and political theory. Before coming to UW—Madison, Kaden worked for Teaching, Research, & International Policy and AidData at the College of William & Mary’s Global Research Institute. Kaden graduated from Smith …
Biography Jennifer Petersen, a first-year Ph.D. student in political science, wrote extensively on issues of memory, identity, and violence in Rwanda during her master’s program in Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. After returning to the United States, she has entered the Political Science department with plans to study the formation of post-conflict …
Biography Kristin Phillips began conducting her pre-dissertation research in Morogoro, Tanzania, in the summer of 2003. Check out Kristin’s post-fellowship report here.
Biography Isabel Pike is a graduate student in the Sociology department at UW–Madison. Affiliated with UW’s Center for Demography and Ecology, her research interests include marriage, family and fertility trends in Sub-Saharan Africa. Isabel graduated from Princeton University in 2011, majoring in Anthropology. Her undergraduate thesis was on the practice of bride price in Uganda, …
Biography Natalie Porter spent a year and a half in Vietnam teaching English and studying Vietnamese before beginning a PhD program in cultural anthropology. While in Vietnam, Natalie was struck by the way that discourses of development saturated the minutiae of everyday life. She became interested in how global processes of economic development collide with …
Biography Taylor Price departed for Namibia in the summer of 2011 — to explore “the role of traditional leaders … in implementing women’s rights policies enacted by the government” — and managed to extend her stay in the country for more than a year, carrying out research, networking, and bringing back a number of interesting …
Biography Amy Quark is a graduate student in Sociology. Having grown up on a farm in Saskatchewan, Amy has a vested interest in studying the effects of globalization on the agrofood system and on the livelihoods of agricultural producers. In addition to conducting research in rural communities in Saskatchewan and Wisconsin, Amy has also worked …