Human Security Fellowships
2012 Call for Proposals: Human Security Research Fellowships
The Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA) is pleased to announce our 2011-2012 Human Security Research Fellowship Program call for proposals.
Our Human Security Research Fellowships are intended to support research on human security issues, including topics such as: human security, sustainable development, development of alternative energy sources and pro-poor technologies, medical and public health interventions, environmental change, peace building and conflict resolution.
We especially encourage applications in the fields of medicine, the natural sciences, engineering, and information technology where the research has applicability to reducing human insecurity.
Application Deadline: Monday, February 6, 2012 by 5:00 pm.
Download the full call for proposals (Acrobat reader required)
Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security
Established in honor of the significant contributions to human security issues made by Heather Mills, this fellowship will allow graduate students to undertake original research on pressing security issues, and allow them opportunities to use their research to help address real world challenges. This fellowship will provide the resources to attract the best and brightest students to UCI, and enable CUSA to help prepare the next generation of business, policy, and academic leaders for the challenges they will face.
- 2005-2006 -
Dina Giannikopoulos
Disability and Poverty Alleviation: A Cambodian Case Study
Richard Matthew, Heather Mills, Zainab Salbi and Dean Ron Huff present Dina Giannikopoulos with the Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security at CUSA's second Human Security Summit in November 2005.
Since receiving the Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security in November 2005, Dina Giannikopoulos has further developed her dissertation project which examines the promotion of poverty reduction strategies among marginalized populations in Cambodia. Her case study focuses on the social and economic impacts of employment in the garment industry among impoverished women and disabled communities in the vicinity of Phnom Penh. She recently returned from an intensive summer research trip to the region, where she devised her methodology and laid the groundwork for a year-long data gathering trip in 2007. In addition, under the guidance of industry experts at Los Angeles' Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Dina is researching the profitability of alternative business models which will promote more equitable standards in the production of clothing, and will use these findings to bolster the implications of her dissertation research. Her future goals are to assist developing countries to improve labor conditions while increasing their capacity to compete in the global marketplace, thus enhancing the security of those whose livelihoods are dependant on the garment industry.
- 2006-2007 -
Ted Gaulin
Human Security and Climate Change in Western Sudan: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Conflict in Darfur
Heather Mills and CUSA Director Richard Matthew present Ted Gaulin with the Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security at CUSA's third Human Security Summit in October 2006.
While there has been considerable debate in the scholarly and policy community on the precise meaning of the term human security, most academic researchers and policymakers would agree that the people of western Sudan have, in recent years, lived a life of great insecurity. In a mere two years, the conflict in the Darfur region has led to the death of 300,000 people and the displacement of more than 1.5 million. A recent cease-fire between Khartoum and some of the Darfur rebel groups and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force has done little to alleviate the human suffering. My research asks how this conflict arose. The most widely accepted explanation is that it is an ethno-political clash in which the Sudanese military and government-sponsored militias seek to destroy non-Arab rebel groups and their supporters. This is certainly an apt description of Khartoum's long-standing civil war with the people of southern Sudan, but to what extent does it capture the socio-political dynamics behind the Darfur conflict? My preliminary research suggests that this explanation captures only part of the picture. In particular, it neglects the larger social and environmental conditions in which the conflict has taken place. With this fellowship, Ted will undertake fieldwork in Sudan to get a better sense of the movement of peoples, the environmental challenges Darfurians face, and how they might be adapting to these challenges.
- 2007-2008 -
Andrea Ballestero
Translating the human right to water: Pro-poor prices, water security, and collaboration in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica
Heather Mills with Andrea Ballestero, winner of the 2007 Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security
There has been extensive scholarship that reviews the negative and positive consequences of the last 20 years of water privatization schemes in the developing world. However, very little is known about how countries are adopting the human rights rationale for water and how they are transforming their administrative, legal, and economic structures to attend to this mandate. This research aims to fill that gap by documenting the concrete mechanisms that Costa Rica is using and by analyzing the specific consequences of water privatization on a rural community in one of the poorest regions of the Costa Rica.
- 2008-2009 -
Crystal Murphy Morgan
"Trust no one?": Agency and microfinance in Juba, Sudan
Crystal Murphy Morgan, winner of the 2009 Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security, with CUSA Director Richard Matthew and 2009 Human Security Award winners Mark Johnson and Whitney Burditt.
With the Heather Mills Heather Mills Graduate Fellowship in Human Security, Crystal Morgan traveled to South Sudan to conduct doctoral dissertation research on microfinance in the post-conflict context. Morgan conducted fieldwork including interviews and participant observation with microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Juba, the newly established capital of semi-autonomous South Sudan. This was a timely project about a pressing human security problem: the lack of well-implemented solutions for repatriating refugees to access financial services. This project was driven by the human security paradigm, concerning itself with individuals on the ground exploring how access to capital create security for individuals facing repression by those capitalizing on the wake of conflict. Indeed, there are pressing financial and political conditions that make this research site important for timely knowledge production about the issue.
- 2009-2010 -
Chitvan Trevedi
"Social Entrerpreneurship and Social Change: A Comparative Analysis of High-Impact Social Entrepreneurial Ventures in India"
Chitvan's research project studies two high-impact Indian SEVs that have been successfully replicated in similar and different socio-political and cultural contexts. Specifically, it examines the process of social change in these ventures and investigates the role of intersectoral/ inter-organizational collaboration and collective governance in the realization of the social SEV's goals. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will shed light on the key elements and processes of positive social change created and sustained through SEVs in their efforts to alleviate some of the most complex and long-standing human security issues. Further, it is hoped that the results of this research will guide the development of practical guidelines for the successful replication of these efforts in diverse socio-cultural contexts.
- 2010-2011 -
Amy Grubb
"The Microdynamics of Violence and Order: Comparing Community Social Processes"
Amy's field work is an integral part of her dissertation research project entitled, "The Microdynamics of Violence and Order: Comparing Community Social Processes.", as most data on these small rural communities can only be collected on-site. Amy's research aims to advance understanding of the micropolitics of social violence through field study of localized sources of social violence and order.
The Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship
CUSA's Coalition Advocating Human Security (CAHS) Fellowship program was created in 2005. CAHS fellows will advance its mission of promoting research, education, public awareness, and evidence based policy making to address urgent cases of vulnerability linked to global changes that impact the lives of individuals, communities, and nations.
- 2005-2006 CAHS Fellows -
Heather D. Goldsworthy
Environmental Change and Forced Displacement in Bangladesh: Implications for Peace and Conflict
CAHS co-chair's Sandi Jackson and Susan Samueli and Heather Mills present Heather Goldsworthy with a Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship at CUSA's second Human Security Summit in November 2005.
Since receiving the CAHS Fellowship in Fall 2005, I have completed my graduate emphasis in Feminist Studies, and written and defended my dissertation proposal for a project on microfinance and its impacts on the natural environment, and advanced to PhD candidacy. I have secured funding for the first phases of my dissertation project, including my current period of residence in Washington, D.C. I am currently a graduate fellow of the University of California DC program, working as a teaching assistant and beginning my own research. In D.C. this Fall I am conducting interviews with microfinance professionals and reviewing archived case files for analysis.
Daniel Wehrenfennig
Communication and Human Security: New Opportunities and Challenges in the Network Society
In times of material power politics, with economic interests and military power dominating world politics and deciding over war and peace, is dialogue a viable option for conflict resolution in the present? Or does it only work when small disagreements are present but not for serious issues, like longstanding conflicts in segregated societies. Thirty years ago, the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine were both viewed as "unsolvable". Both were very complex, based on longstanding historic divisions, supported by diverging religious beliefs, built on a history of violence and fostered by a relatively segregated environment. In both cases, it was believed that talk between the sides has been going on for centuries about the issues without any success or change. However, today the effective dialogue process in Northern Ireland is believed to be one of the key components of the successful peace process, while the lack of this element in the Israel/Palestine context is seen as critical. So what made the dialogue process in Northern Ireland successful? Despite the differences between the cases is there something to be learned for the Israel/Palestine context? To find an answer to this question, I conducted a series of interviews first in Northern Ireland last summer and then in Israel/Palestine this summer. These interviews were conducted with participants and organizers of various dialogue processes (formal and informal) from all the different areas of society on both sides, including politics, civil society, faith communities, grassroots and ordinary citizens. In these interviews, I tried to get a better understanding of the dialogue processes in both conflicts and their similarities and differences as well as their relative importance.
- 2006-2007 CAHS Fellows -
Samantha Lane
Justice, Reconciliation and the Law: A Study of Women Survivors of the Genocide in Rwanda
CAHS co-chair Sandi Jackson presents Samantha Lane with a Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship at CUSA's third Human Security Summit in October 2006
The power of law, legal consciousness and the capacity for justice in daily life are of major concern in the reconciliation process for Rwanda. In 1994, between April and July, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed by their fellow countrymen. Mass participation in this extermination campaign against the Tutsi and Hutu sympathizers is not the only shocking feature of this genocide; hundreds of thousands of women were repeatedly raped and sexually brutalized, and many of them died from related wounds, infections, and physical trauma. There were numerous legal protections in place that failed -local/customary, and national legal regimes in addition to the better known international human rights laws. In the years following the genocide, the international community responded by establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to prosecute those most responsible for organizing the genocide. Additionally, close to 10,000 Gacaca courts have been established throughout Rwanda to help with reconciliation. These legal responses, however, have been criticized and questioned for their capacity to provide justice to survivors. Samantha will use this fellowship to help fund field research in Rwanda to explore the extent to which the law has or has not been successful in addressing justice and reconciliation in Rwanda, particularly for women survivors of sexual assault.
P. Brian Fisher
Unequal Power in an Unequal World: Adapting to Climate Change in SIDS
Heather Mills Fellowship winners Dina Giannikopoulos and Ted Gaulin with CAHS Fellowship Winners Daniel Wehrenfennig and P. Brian Fisher
With only a small increase in average global surface temperature to date, the effects of climate change have already had an impact in varying parts of the world and pose serious challenges to even the narrowest conceptions of human security. This project focuses on how climate change imperils human security in vulnerable communities. These cases highlight the unequal positions of the developed countries, which produce the vast majority of carbon contributing directly to climate change, and individuals and communities in developing countries, who disproportionately must to deal with its insidious effects. These cases will abound throughout the world in the next century, from Bangladesh where sea level rise directly threatens 80% of the population, to Peru where deglaciation threatens fresh water supplies, to the African Continent where a one-third decrease in food productivity is projected from climate change. As a result, there is a developing community of the ‘vulnerable', where climate change threatens human security and well-being at its most fundamental level. To date, there is little connecting ‘vulnerable communities' in adapting to the effects of climate change, and this project seeks to explore the common ground upon which these communities can build effective legal and political pathways to empowerment, justice and human security at the global level. Specifically, Brian will use the fellowship to examine the impact of climate change in SIDS (Small Island Developing States) of Oceania where climate change has already had devastating effects.
- 2007-2008 CAHS Fellows -
Brennan Davis, Jui Ramaprasad, and Renee Rottner
Microfinance: Balancing Economic and Environmental Sustainability in Rural India
2007 CAHS Fellowship winners Brennan Davis and Jui Ramaprasad with CAHS co-chairs Sandi Jackson and Susan Samueli and Heather Mills
Microfinance is the practice of providing small loans (often less than $25) to people who lack the assets to secure capital, primarily women and the poor. In developing countries, microfinance has emerged as one of the primary drivers of entrepreneurship. In 2006, The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his pioneering work on microfinance, a topic that is receiving increased attention by scholars. Despite this increased attention, microfinance practice and scholarship has focused on economic outcomes rather than environmental outcomes. The conventional view holds that economic development is fueled by entrepreneurship, and economic development is at odds with environmental stewardship. This tension is especially keen in emerging economies, where the poor are often dependent on natural resources for their livelihood. In other streams of research, scholars have argued that environmental regulation is beneficial to economic growth, at least in highly developed economies. This project will examine the relationship might between economic and environmental sustainability in the context of a microfinanced community in rural India.
Bryan C. Semaan
Technology as a Catalyst for Collaboration Resilience
2007 CAHS Fellowship winner Bryan C. Semaan with CAHS co-chair Susan Samueli
Recently, people across the globe have experienced events that have disrupted their lives. These events range from natural disasters to war, such as: Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in the Bay of Bengal, 9-11, the Israel-Lebanon war, and the invasion of Iraq. Disruptions, when occurring over a prolonged period of time, force people to adapt by forming new personal and work routines in an attempt to salvage the normal aspects of their lives. While organizations may have plans in place to deal with environmental disruptions, little attention has been given to the way in which the human infrastructure can be repaired. Human infrastructure "consists of the highly dynamic patterns of relationships of people in various networks and social arrangements."We would like to better understand the ways in which people use technology to re-orient their human infrastructure, as the human infrastructure is intricately interwoven with technological infrastructures. This project will look at Israelis who experienced the recent Israel-Lebanon war in order to better understand the ways in which people make use of information technology in order to work and live in disrupted environments.
- 2009-2010 CAHS Fellows -
Joanne Nucho
"Producing the Neghborhood: "Trans-Municipal" Urban Planning in Lebanon"
2010 CAHS Fellowship winner, Joanne Nucho
In the wake of a 15-year civil war (1975-1990), urban planning and infrastructure development in Beirut, Lebanon is an ongoing project. In addition to national planning apparatuses, municipalities also help to shape the social, infrastructural and even visual landscape of each neighborhood. Local municipal actors often reach out to collaborate with groups outside Lebanon in order to reach their development aims. The creativity of municipalities in forging urban planning strategies through such means is part of what makes studying planning in Lebanon so interesting today. I intend to study one such urban planning strategy initiated as a joint project between two municipalities: Hospitalet, a suburb of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, and Bourj Hammoud, a neighborhood in Beirut that is home to the largest concentration of Armenians in Lebanon, as well as numerous other sectarian and ethnic communities. In conducting ethnographic research within the district, I seek to better understand the particular needs of the community and the ways in which the municipality seeks to address these needs through infrastructure as well as cultural programs. The research is part of my broader interest in and dissertation focus on the role urban development initiatives play in community building, particularly between various sectarian and ethnic communities in a post-conflict setting. My work will take the form of both a written dissertation and an ethnographic film that is currently in progress.
Kameel Abi-Samra
"Detecting Disease from Saliva with a Low-Cost and Portable Medical Device"
2010 CAHS Fellowship winner Abi-Samra with Malaysian Research Team
Diagnosing disease in the developed world is often not a challenge today because of our constant access to electricity, running water, medical equipment, medical supplies, and abundance of medical professionals. It is the shortage of these assets in impoverished nations that inhibits their ability to diagnose disease at the rate, accuracy, and quantity of the developed world. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes infectious diseases as a major obstacle for economic development for impoverished nations. Thus, it is through the development of low-cost, portable, and robust disease diagnostic devices that we can expand access to quality healthcare, save lives, and help transform impoverished nations into developed ones.
In August 2010, with the aid of my fellowship from CUSA: Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship in Human Security, I had the amazing opportunity to visit the World Health Organization (WHO) Center for Dengue Fever at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The main objective of my visit was to make progress on my project to develop a low-cost and portable diagnostic disease platform for the detection of Dengue Fever from saliva. At the WHO, I made significant contacts with medical doctors and experts who specialize in Dengue Fever detection, management, and treatment. Specifically, we had a series of discussions and meetings that focused on the engineering and medical challenges that must be overcome to enable the development of a portable medical device capable of diagnosing Dengue Fever in low-infrastructure settings. A key achievement of my trip included starting a collaborative project between my laboratory, Dr. Marc Madou’s BioMEMS laboratory at UC Irvine, and with Dr. Fatimah Ibrahim’s laboratory at the University of Malaya, focused on developing such a diagnostic platform. In addition, I arranged several meetings with researchers at MIMOS, a premier Malaysian technology research center, to discuss some of the options for the miniaturization of the pathogen detection techniques and electronics needed for a final low-cost tool. While this project will take several years of research and funding, I strongly believe that my visit to the WHO in Malaysia helped to bring together many of the key players that are necessary for the realization of such a medical device.
For more information please contact 949.824.2686 or Email cusa@uci.edu.