CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants

2025 CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants

 

 

The 2025 CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants are intended to provide outstanding graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) and at the University of Pennsylvania with the opportunity to deepen their disciplinary interests in Latin America and Latinx Studies. 

The application is open to Penn graduate students without citizenship or visa requirements.  

Grantees will have to present their findings at a special event of the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies Internal Speaker (CLALSIS) Series during the 2024-2025 academic year. 

We generally distribute five to ten awards in the range of $500 to $1,000, depending on applications and funding at the time of award distribution.  

Applications will be due in March 2025.  Please contact the CLALS program with any questions at clals-upenn@sas.upenn.edu, or you may contact the CLALS Associate Director directly at bartch@sas.upenn.edu.

 

 

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CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants 2024 Department/School Title Faculty Advisor

Hugo Salas

Spanish and Portuguese

Modern Traditionalism: Refurbishing gauchos, llaneros, and charros

Ericka Beckman

Wilson Hernandez

Criminology

“Playing Safe” against gender-based violence: An impact evaluation of a soccer-based program for boys and girls

Aaron Chalfin

Yenny Paola Rueda Guevara

Demography

The impact of early-life nutrition on socioeconomic status, physical health and cognitive function through middle age

Jere Behmran

Clara Ines Seceira Ziegler

Anthropology

From Clear to Thick Waters: Understanding Lake’s Atitlán Socioecological Changes in Guatemala

Kristina Lyons

Gwendalynn Roebke

Philosophy

Who Can we Be, Who Can we Become, After all this Blood : An Embodied Philosophical Pursuit of the Potentiality of the Marginalized’s Capacity for Coherence, for Survival,  in the Wake of Colonial Rupture

Daniele Lorenzini

Gustavo Alejandro Valenzuela Merino

Anthropology

The Making of a Flammable City: Political Ecology of Fire Management in Valparaíso, Chile

Kristina Lyons

Joaquín Ladeuix

History

Against the Flow. The Chocón Dam and the Making of Industrial Buenos Aires

Amy Offner

Ana Paula Nadalini Mendes

History

Freedom and Tutelage: Liberated African women in Rio de Janeiro

Roquinaldo Ferreira

Elizabeth Rose

Compatative Literature and Literary Theory

Liquid Time /  Translational Space: Black Trans* Feminist Thought in the Americas

Zita Nunes

Alessandra Laurer Rosen Anthropology The Promise of Labor:  Gender, Expertise, and Domestic Worker Reform in Mexico Kristina Lyons                        
Astrid López Méndez  Spanish and Portuguese  Readings on dispossession and colonialism: the case of Servando and de las Casas

Ericka Beckman 

 

CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants 2023 Department/School Title Faculty Advisor
Pablo Aguilera de Castillo Anthropology/SAS Excavating Subterranean Memories: Printmaking as an Archival Method among Yucatec Maya Communities in Cocoyol, Mexico Kristina Lyons
Javier Ardila History/SAS An Arduous Peregrination Through the Shelves: Books, Catalogs, and Public Libraries, Latin America, 1791-1893 Ann Farnsworth-Alvear
Kristen Beamer Economics/SAS Relating Teacher Quality to Teacher and School Characteristics in Mexico Petra Todd
Elver Miguel Durango Loaiza History/SAS La Llave de la Tierra Firme: Trade and Imperial Crisis in the Guajira Peninsula, New Granada (1748-1808) Marcy Norton
Jeanne Rachel Lieberman Anthropology/SAS  Community Media, Historical Memory, and the Making of Justice in Colombia Kristina Lyons
Bonnie Maldonado Africana Studies/SAS Decadent Republic: Black Dominican Women Making Food and Embodying Freedom, Post 20th Century Grace Sanders Johnson
Gabriela Irem Noles Cotito Africana Studies/SAS “The True Emancipation:” Agrarian Reform Act and the Formation of Black Citizenship in Peru 1969-1975 Michael Hanchard
Stephanie Rivera-Kumar City and Regional Planning/Weitzman Mexican Immigrants Strengthening Philadelphia: A Transnational Mixed Methods Approach

Domenic Vitiello

Elizabeth Rose

Compatative Literature and Literary Theory

Liquid Time / Translational Space: Black Trans* Feminist Thought in the Americas

Zita Nunes

Clara Ines Secaira Zeigler                                                                          Anthropology/SAS                                                   Understanding cyanobacterial blooms: past and present perspectives from various actors from Lake Atitlán’s watershed in Guatemala                        Kristina Lyons                        
     

 

CLALS Graduate Student Summer Research Grants 2022 Department/School Title Faculty Advisor
Carlos Alberto Aguilar Gonzalez Sociology/SAS "Aislados;" Undocumented migration in Puerto Rico  Roberto Gonzales
Juan Arboleda History/SAS Raise Your Hand: Constitutional Fever and Participatory Democracy in Brazil and Colombia at the End of the Cold War Ann Farnsworth-Alvear
Joao Victor Nery Fiocchi Rodrigues Sociology/SAS Race, Citizenship, and State Formation in the Americas: A Comparative Historical Project  Tukufu Zuberi
Joshua Reason Africana Studies/SAS (Re)mixing Desire: Black Queer & Trans Experiments in Worldmaking Keisha-Khan Perry
Alexandra Sanchez Rolon Africana Studies/SAS  Puerto Ricans Organizing for Sovereignty in the 19th Century   
Marta Silvia Sanchís Ferrer Romance Languages/SAS Healing Narratives For Our Present World: Sharing Communal Wisdom Ashley Brock
Cecelia Gonzalez Godino Romance Languages/SAS The Other Side of History: Geological Poetics and Epistemological Convergences in Caribbean Art Odette Casamayor-Cisneros
Ericka Graciela Staufert-Reyes  Graduate School of Education  Fostering racial literacies and decolonial praxis across borders: An inquiry community of Mexican educators Hans Gerald Campano
       
LALS Graduate Student On-site Research Grant 2021      
Name Department/School(s)(Most departments are in SAS) Project Title Faculty Advisor
Eiver Miguel Durango Loaiza History La llave de la Tierra Firme,” Trade and Imperial Transforamation in a Black and Indigenous Caribbean (1748-1808) Marcy Norton and Roquinaldo Ferreira
Taylor Elizabeth Dysart History and Sociology of Science The Scientist and the Jaguar: Ayahuasca, Enchantment an the Politics of Knowledge in the Amazon, 1849-2000 Sebastián Gil-Riaño
Carmen Torre Perez Romance Languages “Friki” History: Building a Digital Archive of Cuba’s Underground Cultures (1980-1999) Odette Casamayor-Cisneros
Gillian Maris Jones Anthropology Afro-Indigenous Hurricane Survival: Imperial Connections and Beyond Deborah A. Thomas
Gillian Maris Jones Department of Anthropology No End to Aftermath: Blackness and Being in the Wake of Slavery, Imperialism, and Atlantic Hurricanes Deborah Thomas
Lenin Lozano Guzman Romance Languages Rethinking Rural Peru and Colombia: The Realist Novel during the Neoliberal Era Ericka Beckman
Michael Martin Shea Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Neoliberal Visions: Crisis Landscapes and Poetic Sights Dr. Ashley Brock
Daniel Morales-Armstrong Africana Studies and History ¿Un Tema Agotado?: Reading and Writing Post-Emancipation Labor Contracting in Puerto Rico Grace Sanders Johnson
Randall C Burson History Disastrous Legacies: Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, and Florida in the Hurricane’s Eye in 1928 and Beyond Adriana Petryna
       
LALS Graduate Student On-site Research Grant 2020      
Name Department/School(s)(Most departments are in SAS) Project Title Faculty Advisor
Randall Burson Anthropology & Perelman School of Medicine Movements for a Dignified Life: Situating Mapuche Rights to Life and Land in Chile’s Shifting Political Landscape Adriana Petryna
Kim Cardenas Political Science LGBTQ+ Latinx and Black Activism: Identity Salience, Local Context, and Mobilization Michael Jones-Correa
Santiago Cunial Political Science Energy Transitions in Developing Countries: Economic Crises and Time Horizons in Latin America Tulia Falleti
Francisco Diaz Anthropology Becoming Mayanist: the archaeo-genesis of a research tradition Richard Leventhal
Dylan Farrell-Bryan Sociology Deciding to Deport: Judges, Decision-Making, and the Bureaucracy of Removal from Immigration Court Emilio Parrado
Gillian Maris Jones Anthropology and Africana Studies No End to Aftermath: Blackness and Being in the Wake of Slavery, Imperialism, and Atlantic Hurricanes Deborah Thomas
Yasmín Amira Mertehikian Sociology Argentina’s Fertility Regime (1980-2010): The End of the First Demographic Transition or an Emergent Second One? Emilio Parrado
Daniel Morales-Armstrong Africana Studies Developing a Transnational, Multi-Archive Catalog of Documents Related to Post-Emancipation Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico Grace Sanders Johnson
Brett Robert History Disastrous Legacies: Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, and Florida in the Hurricane’s Eye in 1928 and Beyond Ann Farnsworth Alvear
Giovani Rocha Political Science and Africana Studies Racial Policy, Ideology and Subnational Politics in Latin America Tulia Falleti
Marlen Rosas History Recording Resistance: Indigenous Activists' Archives and Narrative Power in Ecuador Ann Farnsworth-Alvear
Michael MartinShea Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Seeing Beyond History: American Visionary Poets and the Neoliberal Turn Ashley Brock