The International Division Pre-Dissertation Travel Scholarships support overseas travel to potential field research sites for doctoral students. The impact of these scholarships is significant, enabling groundbreaking research and fostering global leadership.
This year, the International Division is proud to support eight outstanding PhD candidates who embody the spirit of this award. Their planned fieldwork promises to advance our understanding of critical global challenges.
Join us in celebrating the 2025 International Division Pre-Dissertation Scholarship awardees:
Tatiana Cruz
Cruz is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science specializing in comparative politics. Her current research explores citizens’ trust in political institutions under authoritarian populist leadership, with a regional focus on Latin America. Before beginning her PhD, Cruz served as a legal advisor in the Brazilian Air Force, working in the legal office of the Air Force Chief Commander. She also taught criminal procedure at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora Law School. She holds a JD from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil), an LLM from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), a PhD in Law from the University of Brasília (Brazil), and a master’s in international public affairs from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison.
Adrian Beyer
Beyer is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures whose research centers on trans identity and sexual health. His current research works to illuminate shared health concerns among various transmasculine identity groups in Thailand. Building upon previous fieldwork experience in sexual health clinics and LGBTQ+ pride events in Thailand, Beyer continues his passion for health advocacy among queer and trans communities with his pre-dissertation research. Thanks to support from the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS), Beyer will spend his summer in Thailand engaging with transmasculine community organizations. He’ll be researching the healthcare issues and barriers to care that these communities face. The ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted during this time will help shape Beyer’s dissertation project.
Norah-Frida Tebid
Tebid is a comparativist in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on subnational movements and political violence in postcolonial Africa, with regional emphasis in Central Africa. Her dissertation work explores how diaspora communities participate in and respond to movements for territorial and political autonomy, focusing on the influence of transnational networks. With the support of IRIS, Tebid’s summer fieldwork will begin mapping Cameroonian diaspora networks to identify the motivations for diaspora intervention in secessionist struggles.
Jungyeon Lee
Lee is a PhD student in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department. Her research interests lie in communications, the feminist movement, and affect theory. She has focused on understanding how affective energy has been driving the recent feminist movement in South Korea. With the support of the IRIS award, she intends to expand her understanding of its shift and connection to more current events in the region, particularly studying what fosters solidarity among various marginalized groups in the public sphere. Prior to coming to UW, Lee completed an MA in women’s studies at Ewha Womans University, South Korea, where she explored the struggles encountered by Korean feminists in their activism, such as burnout and the tensions caused by the movement’s convergence with fandom culture.
Yue Qiu
Qiu is a second-year history PhD student at UW-Madison. Before joining UW–Madison, she completed her bachelor’s degree at Duke Kunshan University, China, and she took a gap year to study Bangla with the American Institute of Indian Studies. Her doctoral studies focus on the social and intellectual history of cultural exchanges across Bengal and China during the late-colonial and post-colonial eras.
Estela Lopez 
Lopez is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. Her research looks at the intersectionality of race and gender and its influence on the experiences of Afro-Brazilian women in higher education. She investigates how Afro-Brazilian women navigate the structural inequalities found in universities related to their intersectional identities. Lopez examines support systems that help them persist in their postsecondary studies in Brazil, a country that widely believes in racial harmony and denies racism. She holds an MA in educational policy studies from UW-Madison and a master’s in public affairs from IU-Bloomington.
Ramata Diallo
Diallo is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction with a doctoral minor in Educational Policy Studies. Her research lies at the intersection of Black African girlhood, global development, education, space/place, affect, and time. Drawing on decolonial, feminist, and genealogical approaches, her work examines how colonial and postcolonial logics shape educational discourses and policies targeting African girls. Committed to centering African epistemologies and experiences, she is especially interested in how girlhood is produced, mobilized, and felt within global development agendas and in everyday spaces. With this scholarship, Diallo plans to do digital archival research on West African girlhood.
Yirui Ma
Ma is a PhD student in the Department of History, specializing in borderlands history, environmental history, and food history of China and East Asia. Her research explores how certain foods, through their production and circulation, resisted processes of industrialization and state incorporation from the early modern period to the present. This summer, supported by this IRIS scholarship, she will conduct fieldwork in Inner Mongolia on agricultural reclamation and livestock modernization from the 19th century to today.
For current PhD students looking to develop their research plans with an international focus, and particularly those addressing challenges faced by disadvantaged persons and communities, watch for the next application cycle in the fall and visit our webpage to learn more!