---

News Release

Last modified: Tuesday, January 15, 2013

IU Bloomington faculty receive grants for international research, teaching

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 15, 2013

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Nearly two dozen Indiana University Bloomington faculty and graduate students have received grants in the first round of funding made possible by the Mellon Innovating International Research and Teaching program.

The MIIRT program is funded through a $750,000 award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation received last year.

The Mellon award supports a three-year program to foster new directions in international and area studies that include collaborations among faculty in the humanities, social sciences and professional schools throughout the Bloomington campus. It also will extend opportunities for faculty and students to engage in collaborations in international, area and global studies.

"International engagement is one of IU Bloomington's major strengths and top priorities. These projects exemplify the far-reaching and meaningful work that is being initiated on this campus," said Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel, who also serves as principal investigator on the Mellon grant. "We are exceedingly grateful to the Mellon Foundation for recognizing the importance of this work and enabling our faculty and graduate students to pursue such promising and significant projects."

According to IU Bloomington Vice Provost for Research Sarita Soni, a diverse group of faculty from IU Bloomington are receiving awards, including faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and its new School of Global and International Studies; the Maurer School of Law; the Jacobs School of Music; the School of Education; and the IU Libraries.

"The number of faculty and schools involved in this new grant program speaks to the fruitful collaborations the Mellon funding is making possible," said Soni, co-principal investigator on the project. "The international regions covered by the awarded projects are truly wide-ranging, from Brazil, China and India to Peru, South Africa and Vietnam."

In each of the three project years, there are four funding programs, all of which are new initiatives at IU Bloomington: faculty short-term fellowships, graduate short-term fellowships, curriculum development fellowships and innovative workshops.

Mellon Innovating International Research and Teaching award recipients:

Faculty Short-Term Fellowships -- $20,000

• Ling-Yu Hung, Department of Anthropology, "Tao River Archaeological Project: Environment, Population, and Technology in Neolithic and Bronze Age NW China"
• Chien-Jer Charles Lin, East Asian Languages and Cultures, "The Influence of Non-Alphabetic Phonetic Orthography on Mandarin Speech Perception"
• Jennifer Goodlander, Department of Theatre and Drama, "National Identity/Traditional Arts: Shadow Puppetry in Indonesia and Cambodia"
• Alex Lichtenstein, Department of History, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid in South Africa"
• Phuc Phan, Jacobs School of Music, "Laying the Foundation for the First Vietnamese Requiem"
• Christiana Ochoa, Maurer School of Law, "Rethinking the Rule of Law: Observations and Proposals on the Role of Law and Lawyers in Development Programming"

Graduate Student Short-Term Fellowships -- $20,000

• Malika Bahovadinova, Department of Anthropology, "Flexible Bureaucracies: International Organizations' Growing Influence on Public Policy in Tajikistan"
• Timothy Grose, Central Eurasian Studies, "The Uyghurs of the Xinjiang Class: Education, Ethnic Identity, and the Zhonghua Minzu Discontent Members"
• Catalin Cristoloveanu, Department of History, "A Violent Negotiation: Collectivization and the Conflict Over Land in Romania, 1949-1962"
• Shahin Kachwala, Department of Gender Studies, "Gender, Violence, and Nationalism: India's Independence Struggle, 1919-1939"
• Margaret Remstad, School of Education, "A Human Rights Approach to Intercultural Bilingual Education in Peru"

Innovative Curriculum Development -- $20,000

• Asma Afsaruddin and Nader Morkus, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, "Understanding Arab Societies in a Globalizing World"

Innovative Workshops -- $5,000

• Lynn Hooker, Central Eurasian Studies, "Building a 'Virtual Roma Cultural House': A Workshop of the Development of an Online Resource in Romani Studies"
• Marion Frank-Wilson, Wells Library, "Future Trends in Area Studies Librarianship-Partnerships
• Oner Ozcelik, Central Eurasian Studies, "Intensive Workshop on Distance Teaching and Learning for Less Commonly Taught and Critical Languages"
• Akinwumi Adesokan, Comparative Literature, "Digital Paradox: Piracy, Ownership, and the Constraints of African Screen Media"
• Alex Lichtenstein, Department of History, "Exhibiting Margaret Bourke-White in South Africa"
• Maria Shardakova, Department of Slavic Studies, "Business Communication Across the Atlantic"

More information about the MIIRT program is available at the Research Development section of the website for the IU Bloomington Vice Provost for Research.

---

---