The Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS) Graduate Student Summer Fieldwork Award offers financial support for UW–Madison graduate students across all disciplines and career stages. This award enables them to conduct critical field research or other work abroad, underscoring the expansive nature of the IRIS community.
Every year, the International Division offers seven IRIS Graduate Student Summer Fieldwork Awards. Additionally, in collaboration with the Black Languages, Arts, and Culture Foundation (BLAC) Foundation, two scholars received a $1,000 supplemental grant to pursue international field research in the Global South.
Read more about the 2025 awardees and their research interests below:
Thao Pham
Pham is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. Her research explores how historical institutions and events shape contemporary educational outcomes and achievement gaps, with a particular focus on Vietnam. Before graduate school, Thao worked at Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance, managing official development assistance (ODAs) and government-guaranteed loans for development projects, and later served as a lecturer at Foreign Trade University. These experiences deepened her interest in how different layers of Vietnam’s state-building history have left enduring marks on public policy and educational development. Her research aims to uncover how a closer examination of these historical layers can inform more culturally grounded and effective policymaking.
James Rosenberg
Rosenberg is a PhD candidate in sociology and a visiting research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His dissertation investigates how the use of digital technology as a tool of statecraft shapes relations among states, markets, and citizens. Specifically, he considers the linkage of state-led digital identification systems with digital payment systems. He considers three paradigmatic cases of this linkage: those of Singapore, India, and the EU. With the support of the IRIS fellowship, he will conduct archival research in Singapore on the country’s “Singpass” initiative.
Younsun Choi
Choi is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction. Her research project, “Historicizing the Figure of the Ideal Human in Curriculum: Colonial Affect in Korean and U.S. Educational Visual Materials from the 19th to 21st Centuries,” examines how visual culture has shaped notions of the ideal human across different historical periods. This summer, Choi will conduct fieldwork in South Korea, collecting archival materials and primary sources from the 19th and 20th centuries. Her first archive visit focuses on the modernization of Joseon, the records of U.S. missionaries, and the late Joseon dynasty. The second archive centers on mid-20th-century Korean anti-communism and nationalism. Through this work, she seeks to explore how the curriculum has constructed the figure of the ideal human within the context of U.S.–Korea relations shaped by modernity and governmentality.
Arijit Banerjee
Banerjee is a second-year PhD student in English and interdisciplinary theatre studies at UW–Madison. He holds MPhils in Chinese Philosophy (Fudan University) and Theatre and Performance Studies (Jawaharlal Nehru University), along with master’s degrees in history and performance studies from Ambedkar University Delhi. His research interests span political art, aesthetic philosophy, critical theory, modern Sinophone studies, and postcolonial literatures of the Global South. Currently, he explores theatricality and intermediality in contemporary video and performance art.
Michael Zaslavsky
Zaslavsky is a fourth-year PhD student in the Sociology Department and an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology. He is interested in how populations change due to conflict and, relatedly, how ethno-national groups whose home countries are at war relate to one another in third countries. With this IRIS award, he plans to study the relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian communities in Türkiye.
Ali Baba Sanchi
As one of the IRIS/BLAC Foundation supplemental award recipients, Sanchi’s research focuses on the sociocultural manifestations of memory and trauma among victims of violence, including Boko Haram’s insurgency, banditry, and kidnapping, in Northwest Nigeria. His ethnographic fieldwork examines forced migration, victims’ memories of violence, PTSD and PTI, cultural healing, and their experiences as internally displaced persons. Originally from Nigeria, Sanchi holds multiple master’s degrees, including linguistics from Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto and Anthropology from UW–Madison, where he also minored in communication arts with a focus on cultural documentary. A recipient of numerous awards, including the Fulbright FLTA and Williams A. Brown Research Grants, he plans to use this IRIS award to study cultural healing among victims of violence in Northwestern Nigeria.
Srotaswini Bhowmick
Bhowmick is a doctoral researcher in the Department of History at UW–Madison and is one of the IRIS/BLAC Foundation supplemental award recipients. She explores histories of gender and subject formation in postcolonial India (1950s-1970s). Her research contextualizes the creation of “national” elements in films produced by India and Pakistan following the 1947 Partition of Bengal, a rupture that split a culturally unified region along religious lines. This summer, as she progresses toward PhD candidacy, a successful archive trip to the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) (Pune), AIR Archives (New Delhi), and Chitrabani Archive (Kolkata) will be pivotal in shaping the direction of her research. Through microhistorical analysis, Bhowmick aims to uncover overlooked narratives, regional epistemologies, and the voices of filmmakers, production workers, and audiences in post-Partition film history.
For current graduate students looking to extend their research globally, the application window opens each November. Visit our Graduate Student Summer Fieldwork Award page to learn more. For any questions, please email the IRIS awards office at awards@iris.wisc.edu.