Editor’s Note: Ingrid Nelson is one of eight UO students to receive a U.S. Student Program Fulbright award this year.  She has also received funding from CSWS for her research in Mozambique. This story is used by permission of the author and taken from her personal blog.

Ingrid Nelson

by Ingrid Nelson, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography

October 10, 2009—A couple of days ago I was rushing around the city to get several errands done before sunset. I walked a fast 1.5 miles to an old friend’s office to give him a report by a Mozambican research institute about the coal mining situation and community resettlement fiasco up north in Moatize in Tete province (a Brazilian company has won the rights to run the expansion of the mine). I dashed to the bakery to pick up some bread and then walked across the city to my neighborhood. Traffic had doubled. One really needs to develop a sense of how fast a car is traveling and if it is accelerating or risk being run down. I dodged a large 4×4 as I crossed one side street and then turned to cross the main road. A group of young girls in their green and white school uniforms were giggling as they headed home. One of the girls held the hand of what I assumed to be her little brother who was only a toddler. As I thought to myself about how responsible the girl was, about how the burden of taking care of younger siblings often rests upon girls in the family, I suddenly heard the girls erupt in laugher and one of the girls said something I couldn’t quite hear followed by something that sounded like “nee-haw,” which didn’t sound particularly Portuguese or Xitsonga, Cicopi or other languages of the region. I looked up and suddenly saw what they were on about. A flatbed truck drove by that was carrying a crew of 15 Chinese construction workers all in salmon-red work suits and hardhats. Yikes, I had just witnessed this group of little girls yelling racist remarks to this group of Chinese workers.

Shannon Bell, front center, with the Harts Photovoice Group at their exhibit in West Virginia, April 2009.

Shannon Elizabeth Bell is a sociology graduate student with an activist’s heart. In her first grant application to CSWS, Bell noted that women are at the fore of the anti-coal movement in central Appalachia, stepping out of their traditional Appalachian gender roles to take an active leadership position in fighting the coal industry. Her scholarship has a mission—to help these women in low income coal-mining areas of West Virginia find more effective ways to use their voices through grassroots action.

“Mobilizing for Environmental Justice in the West Virginia Coalfields: Uncovering the Process of Cognitive Liberation through the Feminist Methodology of Photovoice” is a hefty title for a weighty project. Bell’s doctoral work caught the attention of the Center for the Study of Women in Society grant committee, earning Bell CSWS graduate student research grants totaling more than $4600.

The National Women’s History Project has selected the theme “Writing Women Back Into History” for 2010. In recognition of this theme, and in support of the continued work of women’s history, CSWS’s Road Scholars Program is organizing a series of talks that will be made available to Eugene public schools and other public venues for Women’s History Month (March 2010).

CSWS will make awards of $200 each for presentations by graduate students that address some aspect of this broad theme. Presentations that situate women’s history in relation to race, ethnicity, class, or ability, or in an international context, are strongly encouraged. These 20–30 minute presentations need to be accessible to a very general audience, likely to be middle or high school students.

Those graduate students who receive awards will be expected to be available to give their presentation once (and no more than twice) in public venues to be organized by CSWS.

To apply, graduate students must submit the following by 10/7/09:

• Curriculum vitae
• 500 word abstract describing the proposed presentation
• Sample bibliography

Drop application materials by our office or send them to:    CSWS   340 Hendricks Hall   University of Oregon   Eugene OR 97403-1201

For more information, email: csws@uoregon.edu

Selected students will be asked to present their proposal to a CSWS committee before 11/1/09.

The Center for the Study of Women in Society invites applications from University of Oregon undergraduate students for the $1,000 Jane Higdon Senior Thesis Scholarship. This award is intended to support students at the University of Oregon who are preparing a senior thesis in any department on campus on issues related to women and/or gender. CSWS will also consider projects with either the scholarly rigor or a research component comparable to that of a thesis. The deadline is November 16, 2009.

This award honors the life and work of Jane Higdon, a faculty researcher at the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU and an avid endurance athlete.  The financial support for this scholarship is provided by the Jane Higdon Foundation, which is dedicated to encouraging and empowering young people to pursue healthy and active lifestyles and academic excellence.

Awards are subject to conditions set by CSWS, which falls under the purview of the UO Office of the Vice President for Research. For more information on how to apply for the scholarship, students should refer to the application guidelines. Please click here to go to the guideline and application form links.

Ingrid Nelson, at the Centro de Formação Jurídica e Judiciária in Matola, Mozambique.

Graduate student Ingrid Nelson is one of eight UO students to receive a U.S. Student Program Fulbright award this year. The grant will support her doctoral dissertation research, “Gender Equity and Rural Sustainable Development in Zambézia, Mozambique.”

A Ph.D. candidate in geography, Nelson delivered a CSWS “Noon Talk” last May. Nelson spoke about a groundbreaking new family law passed in Mozambique in 2004, which is meant to extend ecosystem access to the poor. She shared preliminary observations from her internship with a grassroots environmental organization in Mozambique in 2007. She also outlined her upcoming research concerning the implications and outcomes of this new law.

The Fulbright will support Nelson’s 10-month stay in Maputo and Quelimane, where she will compete the majority of her research in rural communities.

Nelson was the recipient of a CSWS and Center on Diversity and Community
(CoDaC) Award in 2007/2008 for “Forests and Women’s Lives: Locating Rural Women’s Power in the Context of Natural Resource Access in Mozambique.” Her advisor is Lise Nelson, a UO assistant professor of geography.

A rare opportunity for paid Congressional internships is now open for female college students.  The “Geek Squad Academy-Women’s High Tech Coalition Internship” is offering $3,000 scholarships to young women interning on Capitol Hill in Fall 2009 or Spring 2010 “to gain valuable hands-on experience on the Hill that will help them pursue a future career in science or technology.”

Interns will spend half their time in a Congressional member’s office and half with the Women’s High Tech Coalition (WHTC). According to the WHTC news release, “The scholarship recognizes the importance of young women studying math, science or technology and the incorporation of a public policy internship in the pursuit of a career in science or technology.”

Applications must be submitted through the WHTC website.  Deadline for Fall 2009 is listed as September 4. Deadline for Spring 2010 is January 8, 2010.