Jessica Chelekis has been awarded the NSF Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Improvement. The title of her project is: “Women and Direct Selling as a Household Economic Strategy in the Lower Brazilian Amazon.” She will be working in Ponta de Pedras, Marajó, Brazil, and the research will take a year (Sept 08-Sept 09). She will examine the impacts of direct sales through corporations like Avon and Tupperware in household economies in the Brazilian Amazon. She is also concerned with how economic changes associated with direct sales transform and/or reinforce traditional gender relationships.
Tony Cak received the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the Geography and Regional Science program. The title of his project is “Changing the Amazon Landscape: Dynamics of Land Use and Ecological Change in Small Watersheds”. He will be working in Altamira, Pará, Brazil, from August 2008-May 2009, and will be examining the role of household needs and activities, land and water use, and perception of water quality in affecting the water quality of small watershed streams. Tony also received notice that he is a recipient of the National Security Education Program’s David L. Boren Fellowship to aid funding of his project.
Rodrigo Penna Ferme Pedrosa has been awarded the Inter American Foundation Grassroots Fellowship to pursue a year-long field work research among quilombolas in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo). His project is titled: “Poverty, Identity and nature conservation in Brazil”. This work will be initiated in mid-September and will last for at least 8-10 months. He will collect ethnographic, household survey, interviews, and land use/cover change data to understand the impacts of cultural and environmental policies on people’s livelihood, identity and the environment.