Student Scholarship

Jordan Ennis, a senior at Elon who graduated with an international and global studies and political science double major, was awarded a research grant from the CRGE for her research titled “The Economics of Ethnicity: A Case Study of the Maasai and Batwa Indigenous Peoples.” Jordan first became interested in this research when she studied abroad in Tanzania during the Spring 2020 semester. While abroad, she was able to form connections with people from one of the indigenous groups she studied. Even though she always had an interest in researching some place in Africa, she only wanted to research a country that she visited firsthand. She was fascinated with the history of these indigenous groups, who were forced to stay in one place after being colonized, even though the ethnic groups frequently moved and crossed borders for economic sustenance.

After graduation, Jordan will be attending law school and continue working to publish her research.

Kathryn Gerry ’20, a double major in Political Science and International and Global Studies, studied Indian migration and migrant experiences alongside her research mentor, Dr. Amy Allocco. Her project, entitled “Migration and South India’s Shifting Landscapes: Social and Religious Change in Kerala,” explored the social and economic history of Kerala as well as the South Indian styles of religious dress and sacred architecture. Gerry spent the summer of 2019 immersing herself in fieldwork in several South Indian communities.

Gerry became interested in her research project because of the way it combines her areas of academic interest, connecting the regional areas of Middle East and Asia with interreligious studies on a global scale by tracking flows of migration.

Taylor Garner ’20, an International and Global Studies major, received CRGE funding to work on a project entitled “Women’s Intergenerational Memory in Argentina and Palestine” alongside mentor Dr. Sandy Marshall. She spent the summer of 2019 conducting research in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she met with women living in Palestine to hear their stories of political violence. These collective memories have long been suppressed, and this project aimed to bring these women’s stories into the limelight. The data from these interviews were included in Garner’s final Honors thesis, which she completed in the spring of 2020.

In addition to completing her research during her senior year at Elon, Garner presented elements of her research at the American Association of Geographers in the spring of 2020.

Lindsay Maldari ’19, an Art History and Political Science double major, used her CRGE grant to fund a week of independent research in Rome to support her Honors thesis, entitled: “Fixed Time: An Object-Oriented Approach to Anachronisms in La Difesa Della Razza” and mentored by Dr. Evan Gatti. She visited multiple archives which housed the Fascist publication she researched, explored a number of museum exhibits related to Holocaust memory, and visited Fascist architectural and historical sites. She also had the opportunity to speak with a number of locals and found that these individualized conversations shaped her research more than she could have hoped.

Overall, this experience deepened her appreciation for global learning, as she came to appreciate how much she was able to augment the quality of her research over the span of just a week of cultural immersion.

In the spring of 2019, Maldari presented elements of her research at the UNC Greensboro Honors Symposium, NCUR, SURF, and Life at Elon.

Luz Regina Mendoza, ’19, an Economics major, sought to determine the economic and social impacts of participation in Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) on South Sudanese refugees and host citizens in Northern Uganda. Alongside mentor Dr. Steve DeLoach, she collaborated with a non-governmental organization called Seed Effect to assess the impact of their VSLA program. Through data analysis, she found that refugees tend to borrow more, specifically on school fees, than non-refugees. Furthermore, an increase in the amount that participants are allowed to save in each period decreases the ability for many participants to save and borrow, limiting the positive impact of the VSLA. The results suggest that Seed Effect could increase their impact by limiting the value of each share chosen by savings groups. Through her CRGE grant, Mendoza was also able to travel to Uganda to interact with the individuals that she was researching. In the spring of 2019, Mendoza presented aspects of her research at the Eastern Economics Association’s annual conference in New York City and at the Spring Undergraduate Research Forum at Elon University.