There’s no shortage of media coverage when it comes to China’s booming economic sector.  Reforms dating back to the 1970s have launched China’s economy on a trajectory that was unfathomable 40 years ago.  Now that the country has established industrial and financial infrastructures, it is looking for ways to sustain its economic growth.  Neil Edwards ’14 is examining the developing investment of China in Tanzania to see if it fosters a mutually beneficial relationship between the countries.

A film produced by Erica Kowsz ’11 and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale, along with Irish filmmaker Kieran Concannon and University of Notre Dame Professor of Anthropology Ian Kuijt, was published by The Archaeology Channel.  Silent Stones of Inishark: Memories, Archaeology, Landscape was featured in a January “Video News” segment.

Psychology major Beril Esen ’13 spent the early months of this summer conducting a study on the recently discovered concept of defensive self-esteem. But when her psychology research ended in late June, her academic plans for the summer were hardly complete. Esen was also awarded a Summer Research Fellowship by the Levitt Center for Public Affairs to study the issue of domestic violence in her native city of Istanbul, Turkey.

World politics major Martin Lavallee ’14 has taken up the cause of disenfranchised rural farmers in Honduras by conducting a Levitt Summer Research Project to investigate possible land reform solutions to their plight.

Melissa Mann ’13 hopes to help alleviate the growing problem of brownfields by conducting research with an organization that utilizes federal and state grants to clean up and redevelop these vacant plots of land. She received a Levitt Summer Research Fellowship to work with the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corps. to complete the first of the Brownfield Opportunity Areas program three grant application steps.

Although Nicholas Yepes ’15 had traveled to Paraguay just three years ago, he was nonetheless surprised by the precarious state of the indigenous migrant population upon his arrival in the capitol city of Asunción this year. He is seeing some of the most economically depressed areas of Paraguay as he studies how best to meet the basic needs of indigenous migrants through a Levitt Research Fellowship.

Pauline Wafula ’13 became interested in HIV/AIDS research after writing a paper on anti-retroviral treatments of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Wafula, an economics major, has been awarded a Levitt Summer Research Fellowship to pursue further HIV/AIDS research with a focus on women in her native Kenya under the guidance of Associate Professor of Economics Stephen Wu.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the forefront of Middle Eastern news coverage, but another conflict of nearly equal importance taking place within the borders of Israel has largely escaped media coverage. As a Levitt Summer Research Fellowship recipient, Joshua Yates ’14 is researching the internal struggle between Israel’s secular Jewish population, which identifies with Judaism but does not strictly adhere to Jewish law, and its ultra-orthodox population of Haredim.  He is working with Professor of History Shoshana Keller.

Whenever a financial institution nears bankruptcy and requests federal bailout funds, it often claims to be “too big to fail.” Unlike the Titanic’s designers who believed that she was too big to physically sink, financial executives hold no illusions about their firms’ lack of invincibility.

Biology and women’s studies are two concentrations not usually associated with one another. Ashley Perritt ’14, a 2012 Levitt Summer Grant Recipient, plans to bridge this gap with her summer research project, “An Investigation of the Profiling in the Emergency Room.” Perritt will be advised by Elizabeth J. McCormack Associate Professor of Women's Studies Vivyan Adair.