Student Programs

Inaugural 2024–2025 Herbert C. Kelman Fellows

Congratulations to the inaugural recipients of the 2024 Weatherhead Center Herbert C. Kelman Research Grant: Tsiona Lida, Catherine Pitcher, and Michael Zanger-Tishler. The grants provide funding to promising graduate students whose research relates to Professor Kelman’s seminal work on the causes, prevention, or resolution of international or ethnic conflicts, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Professor Kelman was a beloved member of the Weatherhead Center for many years, and his pathbreaking work produced important contributions to the potential resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two of the student research projects are shared below.

Tsiona Lida, a PhD candidate in history, will use her grant to continue her dissertation research on the affective underpinnings of Jewish settlement in Palestine. She interprets the work of emotion in animating Jewish attachment to land as well as in mediating historical conceptions of justice. Tsiona plans to conduct research on the chapters of her dissertation which explore how a sense of Jewish belonging and entitlement—to land, property, and safety—was destroyed and sown over the course of the Holocaust and the Nakba.

Michael Zanger-Tishler, a PhD candidate in sociology and social policy, will use his grant to support field research and conduct interviews for his dissertation on criminal justice in different countries and how the data made available about the criminal justice system shapes the ways researchers discuss inequalities in the system. Michael is interested in how data shape the way we can change policies and debates around important societal issues like policing and mass incarceration. While in Jerusalem, he will interview academics, journalists, activists and government statisticians who create and work with data that affects their work and the types of claims they can make. He hopes to show how state structure and cultural differences shape what data are produced and how these are used in public debate.  

2024–2025 Kenneth I. Juster Fellows

The Weatherhead Center is pleased to announce its 2024–2025 class of Juster Fellows. Now in its fourteenth year, this grant initiative is made possible by the generosity of the Honorable Kenneth I. Juster, Harvard and Weatherhead Center alum, member of the Center’s Advisory Committee, and former United States Ambassador to India. Juster has devoted much of his education, professional activities, public service, and nonprofit endeavors to international affairs, and is deeply engaged in promoting international understanding and advancing international relations. Juster grants support undergraduates whose projects may be related to thesis research but may have broader experiential components as well. These newly named Juster Fellows will be undertaking their international experiences this winter or spring.
 
Kendall Edward Carll (History) will travel to four cities in the US to investigate the American approach to China in the long 1990s, from the end of the Cold War to the start of the Global War on Terror. 

Charlotte Grace Duesing (Biology and Global Health Policy) will travel to Indonesia to study the sociopolitical, cultural, and economic roles of coastal ecosystems in Southeast Asia.

Sebastian Ramírez Feune (Government and Economics) will travel to Australia to research Melanesian nationalism, Kanak resistance, and French colonization in the Pacific.

Kim Nahari (Philosophy and Computer Science) will travel to India to learn how different communities perceive and address conflict in their regions. 

Nimrod Ravid (Economics) will travel to New York and Japan to understand how AI voice-agent compares to humans, and how it might shape the future of international trade.  

Ashley Lennox Redhead (Electrical Engineering) will travel to Taiwan to explore the geopolitical and economic impact of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on global technology and international relations.

Hailee Byur Youn (Government and Economics) will travel to Northern Ireland to examine how political negotiation frameworks replaced traditional legal reforms in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Aqib Feroz Zakaria (Government) will travel to Taiwan to research how semiconductor companies have reacted to the geopolitical shocks of recent US export controls and strengthened competition from Mainland China companies.