Students Explore International Development Research

Four Texas A&M students and two students from other universities have been awarded international development and media grants by the Center on Conflict and Development (ConDev). More than $30,000 was awarded to students in 2014 for their innovative research proposals.

The 2014 winners — Amit Ghoshal, Jessica Gilbert, Diana Juarez-Sanchez, and Dhananjaya Katju — are all graduate students at Texas A&M; Immanuel Afolabi from University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Allyson Krupar from Penn State University make up the rest of the winners. Each of them submitted proposals for international research and will be conducting their studies abroad throughout 2015.

The Student Media Grants Program (SMGP) is an annual photojournalism grant awarded to students interested in using innovative methods to research and chronicle issues facing fragile and conflict-affected nations.

Gilbert, a Ph.D. student in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, will conduct a photojournalism and film project to document the diverse perspectives of stakeholders and land use issues in protected areas in Peru. She holds a special motivation in this project because she served as a Peace Corp Volunteer in Peru prior to her graduate studies.

Ghoshal plans to document the struggle between communities and Bengal tigers in India. “This is my homeland and contributing to the research on human-wildlife conflict in West Bengal is vital from both and environmental and social perspective,” Ghoshal said.

The other research projects include women empowerment in a Kenyan refugee camp, perceptions of life in rural Haiti through a woman’s lens, water crises in Nigeria, and ethnic conflict and mediation in India.

The Center on Conflict and Development places an emphasis on working with students within the university and the development industry as a whole. Through internships, the Student Media Grants Program (SMGP), capstone/courses, special lectures and various other engagement opportunities, ConDev interacts with studentsthrough experiential and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary problem-solving opportunities.

The next SMGP application round will be open and awarded in Fall 2015. The SMGP is open to university students worldwide for their innovative research ideas that contain a multimedia component. The research and photography from the 2013 SMGP winners will be on display in the AgriLife Center on March 25.

Since its inaugural round of applicants in 2012, ConDev has awarded research grants to 10 students totaling $50,000.