Congratulations to our 2020 recipients of the YCAR Professional Development Fund.

Fifteen students received funding in support of professional presentations at conferences and workshops in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States on topics ranging from sand extraction to the sunflower movement to Nepali Dalit literature and the Model Minority Stereotype and the Racialization of Asian Youth. 

• Hana Shams Ahmed (Social Anthropology) || The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh as a State of Exception: Jumma Citizenship and Subjectivity at the Territorial and Conceptual Margins
• Arpita Bajpeyi (Dance) || Along the Borders of National Belonging(s)  
• Benjamin Bongolan (Environmental Studies) || Spatial Justice in Turtle Island
• Wendy Alejandra Medina de Loera (Geography) || Sand Extraction in South Sulawesi, Indonesia 
• Jillian Fulton (Social Anthropology) || Underground Dance Music (UDM) and the politics of Arab identity
• Andrew Gayed (Art History and Visual Culture) || Race and Empire: Queering Diaspora in Middle Eastern Art 
• Khem Guragain (English) || Annihilation of Caste or Prolitarianisation?: Aahuti in the Making of Nepali Dalit Literature
• Noa Nahmias (History) || Science as Common Knowledge: Popular Science Exhibitions in 1930s Chin
• Nanditha Narayanamoorthy (Humanities) || Interrogating Identities: A Case Study of Hashtag Movements in India  
• Desmond O’Doherty (Humanities) || Translating Identity: The Transformation of Tongzhi in  (Post-)Colonial Hong Kong
• Min Ah Park (English) || Formal Junctures: Investigating Transnational Crime Between the Cracks in Mr. Kill
• Janice Phonepraseuth (Sociology) || “Whiz Kids”: Examining the Model Minority Stereotype and the Racialization of Asian Youth
• Sadia Uddin (Humanities) || Manto: Narratives of Gendered Sexual Violence in Pakistan Pre and Post-Partition
• Robin Verrall (Politics) || Contesting the Nation: Visual Imagery in the Sunflower Movement
• Rachel Wong (English) || Missing Mothers: Subverting Traditional Modes of Motherhood in The Better Mother

YCAR’s Professional Development Fund subsidizes its Graduate Associates’ travel costs to present their scholarly or creative work. Amounts awarded will range from $50 to $500 with the expectation that they will be used in conjunction with other awards. The next deadline is Monday, 1 February 2021 by 4 pm for activities taking place six months before and six months after the deadline.