Malihe S. Kigasari

Mali will investigate how Latino seniors at an inner city high school in Oakland make decisions about applying to prestigious institutions of higher education such as the University of California at Berkeley. Mali’s project has evolved out of previous fieldwork, in which she uncovered unexpected data suggesting a pattern she terms “self-elimination”: Latino students who were qualified to apply to academically stronger institutions, nevertheless elected to apply to community colleges. In this follow-up study, Mali will use qualitative, “new ethnographic” research methods to gain insight into her student informants’ beliefs, […]

Kabrina Kau

Kabrina will undertake a field-study of the indigenous people of Taiwan, who were colonized by Han immigrants from mainland China in the late-seventeenth century, focusing specifically on their attitudes toward education. Using surveys and interviews with several targeted youth and adult populations in the city of Taitung, she will attempt to ascertain the factors that have impeded this minority group from using education as a means of improving their socio-economic status. She intends her research to provide information that will aid in the development of a new aboriginal education assistance […]

Alison Joy Harrington

Alison’s Peace and Conflict Studies Senior Honors Thesis will examine the specific coalition-building efforts that have taken place historically and in the present between Irish and Mexican peoples. Alison will travel this summer both to Mexico and to Northern Ireland in order to meet with Irish nationals who are involved in the struggle for indigenous people’s rights in Chiapas. In addition, she will be researching coalition work in the United States between Irish Americans and Mexican Americans, looking particularly at the San Patricios, an organization that commemorates Saint Patrick’s (San […]

Sora Yoon Han

Sora’s project promises to provide an important corrective to the stereotype of the “model minority” by giving voice to a generally silenced segment of the Asian American community. Through oral histories of incarcerated Asian Americans, Sora seeks to create a more complete and heterogeneous picture of the economic, social, political and cultural issues facing Asian Americans today. Sora will supplement her use of oral histories with more traditional research methodologies, in order to investigate thoroughly the situation and position of incarcerated Asian Americans and to improve our understanding of their […]

Christophe Marc Wall-Romana

Christophe will translate for publication a volume of poetry, titledViens dit quelqu’un, by the French poet James Sacr. Sacr is one of the most accomplished French poets writing today, the winner of France’s most prestigious poetry prize (Prix Apollinaire, 1988) and highest cultural distinction (Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1987). Translated into Swedish and Spanish, Sacr’s work is still largely unknown in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that the poet has lived in the United States for the last twenty years, where he currently teaches as […]

Natalia Oleg Glebova

Natalia’s Senior Honors Thesis in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology evolves out of her passionate commitment to contribute to the restoration of the environment, a matter she believes should be a priority for modern society. She will be investigating the molecular mechanisms of selenite detoxification in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, focusing on the function of the proteins thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase in toxic metal biotransformation. The results of her research will lead to improved bioremediation of selenite-contaminated soil and water and, more broadly, to a better understanding of the practical use […]

Patrick Chi-Wai Tsui

Patrick’s research will focus on the status of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong in the wake of the former colony’s 1997 return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Since 1949, the Vatican has refused to recognize the PRC’S Catholic Church, maintaining its only ties to China through the two European colonies on its southeastern coast: Hong Kong and Macao. Through historical research and contemporary interviews and field-study in Beijing and Hong Kong, Patrick will both examine the historical relationships between the Catholic Church in mainland China and the […]

Kaci Faylee Elder

Kaci’s project creatively links a study of contemporary intentional communities with the rich history of nineteenth century utopian experiments in the United States. Kaci plans a road trip this summer that will take her to five very different cooperative living communities in Los Angeles, Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Oregon and the Bay Area. In order to dispel the popular notion that the “commune” was born as a concept in the 1960s, Kaci will investigate our national two hundred year history of utopian experiments-both actual and literary-to place her participant-observation studies […]

Neil Arun Tolani

Neil’s project will contribute to our understanding of the biomechanics of human locomotion. By studying backwards walking using human subjects on a treadmill, he hopes to discover how the inverted pendulum mechanism involved in walking is affected by reversing the direction in which human beings normally move. Through further quantitative analysis, Neil intends to determine which biomechanical factors set the metabolic cost of normal walking. The results of his research will have relevant implications for physical therapists and gait-disabled persons, for whom backwards walking is often used as a rehabilitation […]

Laura Anne Brueckner

Combining rigorous academic inquiry with the living practice of theater arts, Laura will be researching commedia dell’arte , a style of masked improvisational comedy that flourished in Italy during the Renaissance. She will devote herself to historical research and practical training this summer and will develop, rehearse and produce a commedia dell’arte production during the academic year, using a cast and crew comprised of Berkeley students. Laura plans to revive this dramatic art form in a historically informed way for the benefit of the entire University community, staging her production, […]