2014-15 Graduate Research and travel grant recipients
PSE Announces its the 2014-15 Cohort of Graduate Student Travel and Research Grant Recipients
Thanks to a generous grant from the Dean of the UMD Graduate School, the PSE began a Graduate Student Travel and Research Grant program in 2013. Grants are offered yearly. Recipients will present their work in the Workshop on Society and the Environment during the 2014-15 academic year. Their work will also be featured on our blog.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Dean of the UMD Graduate School, the PSE began a Graduate Student Travel and Research Grant program in 2013. Grants are offered yearly. Recipients will present their work in the Workshop on Society and the Environment during the 2014-15 academic year. Their work will also be featured on our blog.
SEEDS OF CONTESTATION: GM Crops and politics of agricultural modernization in ghana
Jacqueline Ignatov is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and Politics. Her dissertation research examines the politics of agricultural development in Africa through an examination of the debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in Ghana. Faced with short growing seasons, increased population pressure, and the negative effects of climate change, GM crops have been presented by some development planners as a means to address such agricultural challenges. Yet this particular technology has had a controversial reception by activists who frame GM seed as a means for corporate control over African food systems. Jacqueline will use the PSE grant funds to conduct follow-up research with agricultural research scientists, farmers, anti-GM activists, policymakers, and development planners in Ghana.
The ANACOSTiA RIVER, recreation, and Health: is there an association between limited-contact recreation and adverse health outcomes?
Rianna Murray is a doctoral student in the Toxicology and Environmental Health program at the School of Public Health. Her research is focused on the Anacostia River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, which spans from Maryland into the District of Columbia. The river and its sediment is highly polluted with raw sewage, heavy metals, trash, microbial pathogens and organic chemicals. Despite this contamination, many people use regularly engage in limited-contact recreation on the river, such as kayaking, canoeing, rowing and sport fishing. The contaminants in the river potentially pose threats to the health of recreational users, and her work examines these adverse health outcomes associated with limited contact recreational exposure. Grant funding will be used to present this research at the American Public Health Society Annual Meeting.
Science as political strategy: a comparative case study of the perceptions of science in american politics
Joe Waggle is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and a Fellow in the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. His dissertation contributes to the existing literature on how science and policy interface in American politics by interrogating the assumption that scientific and political actors engage one another with the same motives and toward the same ends. This qualitative project explores the perceptions that these actors have about science, scientists, and their role in policymaking. The empirical foundation of this dissertation relies, in part, on interviews with elite actors engaged in American climate politics. Funds from the PSE Seed grant will support his time this summer as he engages a complex sampling and coding frame to determine who these elite actors are.