By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

The UCLA International Institute recently awarded 25 fellowships to defray the travel costs associated with dissertation fieldwork. Fellowship recipients — all UCLA doctoral candidates — will travel to 25 countries on four continents to conduct research this summer and, in a few cases, this fall.

UCLA International Institute, July 11, 2024 — International research involves multiple challenges: language skills; acquiring visas (and in some cases, official invitations); navigating foreign academic and government bureaucracies; gaining access to archives, field sites and interview subjects; and, of course, funding. For doctoral candidates, fieldwork typically continues for several years, during which young scholars often struggle with limited funding sources and complicated logistics.

Conducting research at international sites directly relevant to their dissertation topics is invaluable for doctoral students. This kind of research cannot be done online and frequently requires years of language, methodological and disciplinary training.

The International Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship of the UCLA International Institute helps cover the travels costs of Bruins who do fieldwork abroad.

Now in its fourteenth year of operation, the competitive fellowship is designed to supplement other funding sources and covers expenses only for air travel and in-country ground transportation. Bruin applicants of all nationalities and from all disciplines are eligible to apply.

This summer, the institute awarded 25 fellowships, with awards ranging from $500 to $1,200. Recipients working in 11 different disciplines — including art history, anthropology, Asian and Near Eastern literatures and cultures, geography, history, theater and urban planning — will use the funds to travel to 25 countries on four continents.

“The International Institute is impressed by the serious research plans submitted by applicants this year,” said Associate Vice Provost Marjorie Elaine. “We are very pleased to help advance the scholarship of UCLA graduate students through this program. Although the grants are small, they can be crucial in making international fieldwork possible.”

The diversity of disciplines and projects represented among awardees is one of the distinguishing features of these International Institute fellowships. A few recipients will be conducting initial fieldwork for their dissertations, such as a graduate student in sociology who will travel to Israel and Palestine to conduct ethnographic observation and settler interviews in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. A doctoral student in geography, also in the early stages of research, will travel to Bogota and Puerto Carreno to study the impacts of forestry-based bioenergy in the country.

Other recipients are advanced doctoral students who have completed the bulk of their fieldwork, but need to do additional targeted research. A doctoral student in history will, for example, visit archives in Shanghai and Wuxi, China, to investigate common reading culture and the educational activities of libraries during the Chinese Republican era (1912–1949). Another will travel to do archaeological research in Luxor, Egypt; and still another will conduct photogrammetry and statue analysis to advance their dissertation research in Near Eastern languages and cultures.

And an art history doctoral candidate will do site-specific research and land surveys in Greece and Albania to investigate the Pindos Mountain Range during the medieval period, including meeting with shepherds who often follow routes that were established in that period.

Among the other countries to which young Bruin fellowship recipients are headed this summer and fall are Canada, Chile, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan.

Published: Thursday, July 11, 2024