Graduate Dissertation Fellows, 2010-11
Tamar Kricheli-Katz (Sociology and Law) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University and a JSD candidate at Stanford Law School. Her research explores the relationships among choice, responsibility, moral judgment and discrimination. Specifically, it aims at investigating whether the belief that individuals can choose to acquire a certain status, affects the ways in which people of this status are then treated, and whether the discrimination against them is legitimized. Focusing on the example of motherhood, Kricheli-Katz shows how the more motherhood is perceived to be a choice women have, the greater the penalties associated with making that choice. In other words, mothers are discriminated against more, when motherhood is perceived to be a choice women have. You can read more in Kricheli-Katz's article: The Cost of Choosing Motherhood. email
Cecilia Mo (Political Economics) is a doctoral candidate in Political Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research broadly focuses on three areas: 1) theories of bounded rationality - how cognitive constraints affect decision-making; 2) the political economy of development, specifically in the domains of gender and education; and 3) public opinion. A summary of Cecilia's work on gender and politics can be found on Gender News: What? Me Sexist?
In her dissertation, Mo examines the factors that induce and facilitate human trafficking on the supply side, and the identification of potential policy instruments for addressing vulnerabilities created by these factors. Mo collected original fieldwork data from villages in Nepal with high trafficking incidences, and is using analytical tools and modeling techniques from economics, political science, sociology, and psychology to illuminate the set of factors that make some women and children so vulnerable to human trafficking. Namely, she marries a game theoretic approach with an analysis of social structures, attitudes and belief construction to understand trafficking vulnerability. In so doing, it is Mo's hope that the study will provide valuable lessons that can assist practitioners in their efforts to construct program and policy instruments that more effectively address human trafficking vulnerability. email
Shiri Regev-Messalem (Law) is a doctoral candidate at Stanford Law School and her main fields of research are gender, poverty and the welfare state. Her dissertation investigates how women welfare recipients justify welfare fraudulent behavior and explores how their justifications for this behavior reflect their relationship to the state and their view of citizenship. Ultimately, her dissertation shifts our understanding of these fraudulent acts that take place in the private sphere. It reveals that such acts can be viewed as a cry for inclusion and acts of citizenship and resistance, which are supported through a collective gendered ideology of care. email
Rania Kassab al-Sweis (Anthropology) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her dissertation, entitled Coming of Age in a Global Egypt: the politics of Transnational Humanitarianism, Childhood and Youth, is an ethnographic exploration into the world of transnational humanitarianism, and the ways in which transnational encounters redefine gendered experiences of childhood, youth and the family in poverty-stricken areas of Cairo and surrounding villages. Based on over two years of fieldwork in Egypt and NGO offices in Paris, France, her dissertation project demonstrates how globally-circulating discourses of children's rights inform new local understandings of personhood and embodiment, and how humanitarian subjects are 'made' through gendered, classed and racialized conceptualizations of suffering and vulnerability. You can read more in the Gender News article: From Revolution to the Everyday: Reflections on childhood, youth and poverty in Egypt. email
Elizabeth Thornberry (History) is a doctoral candidate in African History at Stanford University. Her dissertation traces the history of sexual violence in South Africa's Eastern Cape region from the late precolonial period through the early twentieth century. In particular, her research explores how ideas about sexual consent, sexual morality, and the appropriate punishment for sexual wrongs were reshaped during the colonial encounter in South Africa. A historical analysis of these subjects provides important context for attempts to confront the high rate of sexual violence in contemporary South Africa. email
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2009-10
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2008-09
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2007-08
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2006-07
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2005-06
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2004-05