The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences announced the winners of this year's Graduate Summer Fellowships for Research Excellence. These fellowships help students conduct and complete major research projects – theses for master's students and dissertations for doctoral students.
Winners were selected based on the quality and clarity of proposed summer research plans and their potential to contribute new perspectives in the student's field.
Meet the Fellowship Winners
John Michael Ahern
Creative Writing, MFA
Project Title: "Country Song” (A Novel)
Ahern will use the summer support for archival work in Ireland and site visits in Galveston and Houston to complete his novel about an Irish folk singer living in Galveston.
Kennedy Balzen
Psychology, Ph.D.
Project Title: "Pathways of Personality Disorder: Combining Multiple Methods of Repeated Assessment Across Development and in Daily Life"
Balzen's dissertation brings a new approach to identifying development predictors of borderline personality disorders in young adults. She will set up new software for collecting data to implement this approach.
Houda Chograni
Sociology, M.A.
Project Title: "Framing Resistance in the Global South: American Media Framing of Political Self-Immolations in Tunisia and Tibet"
Chograni will examine how two major American newspapers shape narratives surrounding self-immolation protests in the Global South through quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Juliana Javierre
Spanish, Ph.D.
Project Title: "The Place of Fear: Art as Reclamation"
Javierre explores the role of fear in women's lives, particularly fear caused by sexual abuse, and responses through art. She will travel to Colombia for archival research and fieldwork in three communities.
Ariel Katz
Creative Writing and Literature Ph.D.
Project Title: "Descendants" (A Novel)
Katz's novel is based on her family's experiences during the Holocaust. She will visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum archives in Washington, D.C., for contextual material.
Lucia Lopez
Political Science, Ph.D.
Project Title: "Effort-Signaling Policy Features: How Work Requirements, Time Limits, and Administrative Burdens Influence Social Policy Opinion and Perceptions of Beneficiaries"
Lopez investigates whether design features in social welfare policies that signal recipient effort reduce public ambivalence and build support for more generous benefits. She will focus on data collection and analysis, including obtaining IRB approval for and implementation of survey experiments.