Agenda: February 2–3, 2017

The agenda for the 2017 Weatherhead Center Undergraduate Thesis Conference is being finalized. Below is a rough draft—stay tuned for further updates.

[  Agenda with abstracts  |  PDF Download ]

2017 Undergraduate Associate Thesis Conference

February 2–3, 2017

Center for Government and International Studies, South Building 1730 Cambridge Street, Belfer Case Study Room (S020 on the concourse level)
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Thursday, February 2

12:15 p.m. Welcoming Remarks
Michèle Lamont, Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs; Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies; Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies, Departments of Sociology and African and African American Studies.

12:30–2:30 p.m. Diasporas, Migration, and Politics

Chair: Chris Gratien, Academy Scholar, The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies; Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Virginia.

• Kais Khimji (Social Studies), Canada Program Undergraduate Fellow. Canada and the Ismaili Imamat: transnational Muslim diplomacy and (post)multicultural nationalism.
• Sarah Michieka (African and African American Studies), Rogers Family Research Fellow. The forty-eighth county: Kenyan state-diaspora relations after 1990 and the emergence of the Kenyan diaspora vote.
• Toby Spencer Roper (Social Studies), Sobin Family Research Fellow. The British EU referendum: An analysis of demographic voting trends in Brexit.

2:30–2:45 p.m. Coffee break

2:45–5:00 p.m. Identity and Representation

Chair: Erez Manela, Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard University.

• Hana S. Connelly (History & Literature), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. Nineteenth-century literary representations of Georgia versus the North Caucasus, specifically focusing on the kidnapping of two Georgian princesses by North Dausasian tribal leader, Imam Shamil, in 1854.
• Jessica Margaret Dorfmann (Social Studies), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. Decolonizing multiculturalism: teaching Māori history in a “nation of immigrants.”
• Melda Ayse Gurakar (Social Studies), Frank M. Boas Fellow. Ottoman law in practice versus theory: women and judges coming together to devise unique solutions.

5:00–6:00 p.m. Reception outside of S020

Friday, February 3

8:15–9:00 a.m. Continental breakfast outside of S020

9:00–10:30 a.m. International Relations in the Atlantic Basin

Chair: Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of History, Harvard University.

• Allyson Rose Perez (Social Studies), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. Demystifying and identifying opportunities for US-Cuba agricultural relations. 
• Nick Thomas John Wood (History & Literature), Imperial insecurities, nationalism, and the Falklands War of 1982.

10:30–10:45 a.m. Coffee break

10:45–12:45 p.m. Urban Inequality in the Global South

Chair: Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Department of South Asian Studies; Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard University. 

• Henry Sewall Udayan Shah (History & Literature), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. The construction of urban citizenship through beggary and vagrancy in Bombay, 1898–1959.
• Samantha Deborah Luce (Social Studies), Rogers Family Research Fellow. Taxi violence and the politics of mobility in post-apartheid South Africa. 
• Bharath Venkatesh (South Asian Studies), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. The economic history of transportation and coffee shops in South Asia.

12:45–2:00 p.m. Lunch provided outside of S020

2:00–4:00 p.m. LGBT and Women’s Rights in Latin America

Chair: Jason Beckfield, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

• David J. Coletti (History & Literature), Kenneth I. Juster Fellow. One community, two worlds apart: the effects of economic liberalization and dictatorship on homosexuals in São Paulo, 1964–1984.
• Domenica Alejandra Merino (Social Studies), Simmons Family Research Fellow. Gender inequality and women’s reproductive rights in Ecuador.
• Jonathan Andrew Sands (Social Studies, Global Health and Health Policy), Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Fellow. Strategic dilemmas in Mexico’s LGBT rights movement.

4:00 p.m. Closing Remarks
Theodore J. Gilman, Executive Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.