EDGS-sponsored graduate student summer research in progress

The following Northwestern graduate students were awarded funding by EDGS in March 2016 for their summer research projects. Below is a description of their research in progress.

Angel Alfonso Escamilla Garcia
PhD student, Department of Sociology

Project Title: “Between Borders: Central American Child Migration and the Insight of Civil Organizations in Mexico and Guatemala”

The money awarded was spent mostly in transportation, room and food at the different locations I visited. I paid bus tickets, hostel rooms and meals at the different locations I visited. I also spend part of the award in a digital camera to have evidence of my research for presentations and publications.

In total, I traveled more than 3,000 miles from the borders of México in Tijuana to the Guatemala City visiting shelters and detention centers for immigrant children. Over a month and a half this summer, I visited eighteen different organizations dedicated to serving migrants in Mexico and Guatemala. I relied primarily on interviews to collect data. I conducted a total of fifteen interviews with staff members of shelters and fourteen interviews with children.

While visiting the different shelters I was able to create a wide network of experts in the topic of child migration in México and Guatemala from which I try to keep in contact to learn the most recent event impacting the transit migration population.

In summary, the funds awarded helped me to accomplish the goals of my research enhancing my knowledge around the issue of child migration in transit and with the observation, narrative and visual material collected I hope to contribute to the existing literature and increase our understanding of this sensitive and current topic.

Lantian Li
PhD student, Department of Sociology

Project Title: “Paradoxes of Protectionism: The Politics of New Drug Registration in China”

The EDGS summer grant was very helpful in covering my research cost. As an international student from China, traveling back to conduct research was very expensive. I spent another major amount of money on daily expenses: food, lodging, and gift purchases for my interviewees. Thanks to the EDGS grant, I did not have to use my own stipend to fund the research, which was a fruitful pilot study for my dissertation.

Andrea Rosengarten
PhD student, History

Project Title: “Namibian History Under Twentieth-Century German Colonial and South African Rule”

This summer was enormously useful for the development of my dissertation project on segregation and racial thought in Namibia under German and South African rule. I could not have achieved my new research insights without the support of the EDGS Grant to travel to Windhoek and Cape Town for archival research, and throughout southern Namibia and the Northern Cape region of South Africa for oral history.

I am already seeing the fruits of this labor in the form of presentation opportunities. In early September, I traveled to the world’s largest Namibian studies center located in Basel, Switzerland, (the Basler Afrika Bibliographien affiliated with the University of Basel), to present my research at a lunchtime seminar as an invited speaker. In early December, I will present my developing analysis again at the 2016 African Studies Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Once again, I thank EDGS for this wonderful Summer Research Grant support. This funding has helped me enormously in developing a dissertation topic that I find absolutely fascinating and motivating for the doctoral research years to come.