2019 Undergraduate Research Awards Announced

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is proud to announce that it has awarded two research grants to undergraduate students through the CLACS Undergraduate Research Awards for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

The fund can be used to support Brown University undergraduate students who engage in research or attend conferences in the United States or a country in Latin America or the Caribbean. All undergraduates are welcome to apply. 

The two applicants selected for support in this semester's competition are Jazmín I. Piche (Science and Society & LACA) '19, Nicole Comella (Public Health) '19, and Jackson Sales '20 (LACA & Development Studies).

Comella will be creating a photo essay focusing on health care workers in Havana, Cuba to highlight the critical role of the physician in Cuban society. Her project is titled, “An Army of White Coats:” Cuba’s Revolutionary Physicians. With her photo series, Comella wants to document the current struggles, joys, and paradoxical experience of providing health care in Cuba. In order to achieve this, she aims to utilize both film and digital photography and various portrait techniques to create raw and personal images to evoke critical thinking and cross-disciplinary discussion. This work is directly related to the Global Liberal Independent Study Project (GLISP) she completed while studying abroad and to her Public Health capstone, “Health in Latin America: A Critical Look at the Forces Shaping Health in the Region.”

Piche's project is titled, "Andean Traditional Healing Knowledge and Traditions: An Analysis of their Relationship with Modern Peruvian Healthcare." She will be traveling to Peru as a part of the Action Research in the Andes Seminar through the Center of Social Well-Being in Peru this winter. As a part of the seminar, Piche will be learning about Andean traditional healing and knowledge firsthand from indigenous practitioners and how they can be integrated into modern Peruvian healthcare. This intensive course on interdisciplinary qualitative field methods focuses on Participatory Action Research methodology, Andean Ethnography, Medical Anthropology, socio-environmental Sustainability, and Community Organization in the Quechua-speaking rural communities of the Province of Carhuaz, Ancash.

Jackson was in Puerto Rico investigating the history and context of bomba, a Puerto Rican music tradition, with a focus on its manifestation as cultural resistance against American imperialism. He is interested in the tradition’s resurgence in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the establishment of the Junta de Control Fiscal.