Student Programs

Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) are members of the Center's residential scholarly community and receive research grants primarily for conferences and short-term research travel. Students present and receive feedback on their work in weekly seminars, held on Fridays. Because GSAs come from many scholarly backgrounds, they have an opportunity to learn about approaches and methodologies across disciplines and how to communicate with scholars outside of their own field, resulting in a significant broadening of their intellectual horizons. Congratulations to our Graduate Student Associates who are graduating in 2025:

Bulelani Jili
Department of African and African American Studies
“Leasing Out Sovereignty; The Proliferation of Chinese Surveillance Technologies in Africa”

Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez
Department of Government
“Crime and Democracy: Central America in Comparative Perspective”

Naohito Miura
Committee on the Study of Religion
“Transnational Japanese New Religious Movements: Sekai Meshia Kyō in Angola”

Veronica Peterson
Department of Anthropology
“Taking Care: Home Cooking and Community in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Diaspora”

Pariroo Rattan
Program in Public Policy
“The Moral Politics of the E-conomy: Digitization, the Informal Sector and Populism in Contemporary India”

Hilton Simmet
Program in Public Policy
“Just Economics: Inequality and Political Culture in Cross-National Perspective”

Madai Urteaga Quispe
Department of Government
“Agrarian Developmentalism: The Politics of Development Strategies in Latin America”

Undergraduate Associates receive Weatherhead Center grants designed to help finance summer travel in connection with senior thesis research on international affairs. All grant recipients become Undergraduate Associates for the academic year following their summer research and present their research findings at the Undergraduate Thesis Conference, this year held on February 6–7. 

Below left: Undergraduate students Ryan Hieu Doan-Nguyen and Sebastian Ramírez Feune present their research on a panel chaired by Graduate Student Associate Yi Ning Chang. Credit: Lauren McLaughlin

Below right: Maryam Suraya Karim Tourk presents her research in a talk about India's colonial control of Kashmir in the digital era. Credit: Michelle Nicholasen

The Weatherhead Center congratulates the following undergraduate students who were awarded 2025 Thomas Temple Hoopes Prizes on the basis of their outstanding scholarly work.

Matthew Anzarouth 
“From Liberalism to Civic Republicanism: Rethinking Collective Rights in a Multinational Canada”

Samir Duggasani 
“Social Media Soldiers: Influencers as Brokers in the Contemporary Indian Political Machine”

Isabelle King
“Collateral Damage in Third-Party Interventions: Mixed Methods Evidence from Mali”