Research Grants

For this student-led initiative grant, the grantee envisioned a small-scale, real-time experimentation of a cultural institution to address the issues of lack of access to art in Egypt. The project aimed to utilize the knowledge and skills gained from privileged social and cultural actors to create a physical cultural space to challenge existing structures of art institutions. The grantee initiated an alternative form of “museum” by crowdfunding and exhibiting the work of young artists, with a goal to promote narratives of the youth. The CHRA grant funded a website prototype to serve the purposes of outreach, archiving works, and sharing resources for artists.

For her student-led initiative grant, the grantee identified that there is a communication gap between the hearing and the deaf populations in Ghana. The project’s aim is to raise more awareness among the Ghanaian community on the hearing impaired. The grantee led a club of students to teach would teach sign language in two primary schools. The project spanned for a month. Teachers and volunteers contributed to the sign language education. The project also featured a video and an award to students who demonstrated excellence in sign language. A sign language club was instituted in each primary school after the project ended.

For his student internship grant, the grantee worked as an outreach coordinator for the documentary “Incorrigibles” under director Alison Coryn. The documentary portrays the stories and lives of incarcerated girls in the US from 1900 to today. “Incorrigibles” is a term that was used in New York as a subcategory of PINS (Person In Need of Supervision) in the juvenile legal system. During this project, women who were incarcerated in their teens will share stories and create intergenerational workshops engaging with youth in Newburgh, NY. As the outreach coordinator, the grantee maintained social media for the project, translated materials between English and Spanish, maintained outreach and relationships among community members, conducted research and assisted multiple workshops including wand-making workshop, film screening and community workshop focused on restorative justice.

Over the summer of 2021, the grantee collected interviews with longtime Kingston residents in order to understand how they have been impacted by housing injustice/gentrification within the last decade. The grantee worked for one year at the Kingston Housing Lab along with other students to create a geocoded database of Kingston properties, a brief study of new Airbnbs in the area, and an investigation into housing regulations surrounding mold growth, providing the grantee with a solid basis of preliminary research to expand and elaborate on. With her CHRA student research grant, the grantee combined these interviews with digital maps and quantitative data in order to construct an interactive digital map/archive that depicts the many forms of gentrification within the city of Kingston and surrounding areas of the Hudson Valley.

In summer 2021, CHRA supported four students from the Human Rights and International Law Program at Al-Quds Bard to support their internships at different human rights organizations. The grantee worked as an advocacy intern at Oxfam, a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice. During her internship, the grantee wrote a fact sheet about the right to have access to water in Palestine with a focus on area C of the Jordan valley. Additionally, she was involved in networking and building bridges with local human rights organizations. She organized meetings and communicated with organizations like 7amleh. Inspired by these meetings, Raghad started working on several policy papers ranging from gender justice, displacement, lobbying letters, to climate change in the Occupied Palestinian territory.

“Inside Global” is an innovative mental platform which utilizes cutting-edge emerging technologies and visual storytelling methods to provide mental health services to the most vulnerable individuals. The initiatives mainly targets victims of post-traumatic conditioning, such as former veterans and survivors of gender-based violence. The CHRA student-led initiative grant helped the grantee form relationships with software developers, research centers, and think tanks from all over the world. The BRAC University administration was approached to host the first VR therapy event in Bangladesh on the university’s campus. The project leaders provided virtual reality service to hundreds of students and gathered survey information from them. In addition, the grantee’s team received support and guidance from top-tier tech experts in collaboration with the Bangladesh ICT Division and the IT Ministry of Bangladesh. The CHRA grant helped the grantee’s team overcome financial obstacles and achieve project agendas within a short span of time.

This CHRA student-led initiative grant supported EcoAQB for Eco Footprints, an environmental sustainability club that strives to conduct unique eco-friendly activities, informative skill-derivative workshops, and environmental campaigns to raise awareness about climate change issues and environmental concerns in Palestine. The CHRA grant supported EcoAQB’s campaign “Why Agriculture?” in a Palestinian UNRWA school in the Jalazone refugee camp. The campaign informed high school students in the refugee camp about the current environmental issues in Palestine through presentations and infographics, followed by open discussions with the students about possible solutions. The grantee also organized a Farmers’ Event at Al-Quds Bard College, which allowed Palestinian farmers a platform to shed light on the struggles and restrictions they face from the Israeli occupation.

This student-led initiative project offered technologies of embodied practice to students as tools of artistic research. The grantee initiated a five week movement and performance workshop on the Aesthetics of Embodied Ecologies. The course was presented to Fine Arts students at the University of Witswatersrand and the Open Society University Network via online platforms. It adopted alchemical principles and embodied technologies of ontological noticing as a means to accessing and working with our emotional embodied states as artistic and aesthetic material. The technologies adopted in this movement and performance workshop engage with emotional range and modes of existence that are in excess, or even counter to the exploitation of capitalism and linear thinking. Instead, they offer non-linear tools towards integration with self, community and the environment, in accordance with ecological modes of engagement. By offering conduits to self-witnessing from a subjective position, these techniques can also be used for self-healing, and support resilience in the face of working with unknown’s. In the context of the anthropocene and a globalized economy that is simultaneously collapsing and exploding, this work provided an ethos to dealing with the self and the other through recognition of the ‘fully human’, which is also, by default, ecological. The work provided tools in support of mental health and ecological action in a time where an experience of cartesian mind/body separation is emphasised through seated screen interaction in the era of COVID.

Identifying domestic violence as one of the biggest challenges of women’s rights in Kyrgyzstan, this student-led initiative grant project aimed to raise awareness through teaching photography. The grantee initiated a program to teach photography to 20 students in the Cholpon Ata, Issyk-Kul region, so that they can make photo stories and videos about human rights activities in the region and beyond. The students were taught the foundation of photography and the use of professional camera and smartphones. They practiced each concept and technique in and outside of the classroom. The program also included a human rights workshop and screening of documentaries on domestic violence. The grantee expected that these 20 students will be able to lead future similar projects in their respective region, and build a platform in social media to publicize their works.

With support of the CHRA faculty research grant, the grantee initiated a call for papers on new writing and new perspectives on transgender issues from across the African continent. The envisaged collection intended to outline and define a groundbreaking field, reading the present moment across the African continent and drawing on critical texts that center African-based thinking and theorisations. The call for papers solicited multilingual full-length academic articles, and commentaries and shorter pieces. Alongside this call, the grantee organized two workshops targeted to young scholars and early career researchers. The CHRA grant supported the North/West African workshop in partnership with Kohl Journal, The GALA Queer Archive and the West African Studies Centre. It was held Cape Verde in late-2022, a country that offers protections to LGBT people and has a strong trans community. The workshops gathered scholars for a week-long teaching and writing-intensive with editors of the call.

“Museums for peace” is a student-led intiative project intended to further dialogue about museums, justice and peacebuilding in Colombia. The project is grounded by the grantee’s doctoral research, which focuses on Community-based Museums of Memory (CMM) to study the relationship between emotions, justice and well-being. As a means to resist the effects of traumatic pasts resulting from mass crimes and sociopolitical violence, these museums channel victims’ demands —especially those of women— for truth, justice and peace. The grantee hypothesized that processes which set CMM in motion are built on forms of knowing, emotions, and other rationalities, such as the visual and performing arts, that have been neglected by western modern thought. “Museums for peace” sought to understand other-forms of knowing: to what extent are they related to social change? And how do they provide room to share Feminist and decolonial perspectives about emotions, transitional justice, and critical analysis for research and dialogues? The project involved two phases. The first phase was a three-day symposium entitled “Death, memory and museums”. CHRA’s student-led initiative grant supported creative workshops and discussions held around a traveling exhibition. The project encouraged critical reflection on the scope and limitations of ‘curatorial forms in human rights struggles’. The project aimed at strengthening grassroots initiatives based on friendship, solidarity and care, and defended the centrality of life as opposed to the narratives of militarisation and war.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University to research issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights, or to participate in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They took part in the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee developed a project entitled “Home, uncanny home!”, which included video art and a live performance on the notions of roots and “unrootedness” in relation to experiences of home.

This student grant supported the grantee’s research and photographic project ‘Si Solo Tu Supiera’, which translates to “if only you knew.” The project centered around the personal history and the grantee’s family’s relationship to both Harlem and the Dominican Republic. The grantee has conducted on-going research on the history of the Dominican Republic and the “Dominican-York,” a group of Dominican immigrants to New York and their American-born descendants. The grantee contextualized his on Dominicans immigrating to New York within the medium of photography. The grantee explored the notion of “immigrant collective unconscious” and the traditions/rituals that come with immigrating to a place in which one feels potentially unsafe. Along with this research topic, the grantee photographed scenes from the neighborhood of Harlem through the perspective of an insider and native of the area, to further investigate larger issues such as mass incarceration, gentrification and economic hardships experienced by immigrant communities.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

In summer 2021, CHRA supported four students from the Human Rights and International Law Program at Al-Quds Bard to support their internships at different human rights organizations. The grantee completed an internship at the Community Action Center in East Jerusalem. As an advocacy intern, she documented violations committed by the Israeli Occupation, translated statements, conducted research, and wrote reports. Her internship at the Community Action Center gave her the chance to get two training sessions with human rights experts from Al-Haq Organization, a Human Rights organization in Palestine. The grantee was trained with writing professional statements in legal and academic contexts. She also learned the mechanisms that human rights activists use to collect evidence and document violations.

For her student internship grant, the grantee worked as a project manager on the documentary “Incorrigibles” under director Alison Coryn. The documentary portrays the stories and lives of incarcerated girls in the US from 1900 to today. “Incorrigibles” is a term that was used in New York as a subcategory of PINS (Person In Need of Supervision) in the juvenile legal system. During this project, women who were incarcerated in their teens will share stories and create intergenerational workshops engaging with youth in Newburgh, NY. In her role as an intern and Project Manager, the grantee established an interactive art exhibition that opened on May 28, 2022 and organized subsequent interactive workshops in July 2022. The workshops included Wand-making as symbols of empowerment self-protection and wisdom, Storytelling, film screening and community conversation of “The Wisdom of Trauma,” restorative justice workshop that focused on the criminal justice matrix, and a conversation with Newburgh town Historian about the history of child welfare in and around Newburgh.

This student-led initiative grant explores the cultural diversity of people living in Kakuma Camp in Kenya. The project is designed to tell stories and provide educational opportunities for the community living in Kakuma. The grantee gathered stories and oral histories from Kakuma Camp and posted them on a website designed for the project. Finally, these stories were also shared with the Open Society University Network Hubs in Kenya. The grantee researched the culture practices and dialects adopted at Kakuma, and created multimedia resources based on these findings to be published on the project website. The grantee also planned to organize a trip to visit other displaced person camps to gather and share stories.

In the summer of 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They took part in the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee created a portable exhibition titled “Where does young Art go?”, a mobile collection of her personal experience as a young artist, which consisted of 20 to 30 small pieces of painted works in a traveling bag.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

With her CHRA student-led initiative grant, the grantee launched “Tekka,” a web and mobile based crowdfunding and online marketplace platform that allows Nepali artists to pitch their projects, connect to a lender/investor, receive financial support, promote and sell their artworks. The business model sought to combine with key partners like digital wallets and delivery firms in Nepal and beyond. Tekka’s core operations involved one-to-one mentoring to selected art projects, branding and media support for fundraising, maintaining successful collaboration with key partners, reaching out more artists, marketing Tekka’s storefront, extending it to physical store collaborators and working on publications to promote the local brand. The CHRA grant supported the student to set up a fundraising interface for artists to promote their works online, and an online marketplace.

This student-led initiative grant project “Transparent” is a pedagogical tool created by cross-border collaboration between a queer artist in India and a transfeminist scholar in the UK to visually describe the cyclical violence transgender people are subjected to in India and the world. The grantee launched a clickable website illustrating violence faced by trans community members in diverse contexts, the cyclic nature of which will be highlighted by interlinking each identity-group in a wheel-like format. The CHRA grant supported the grantees to hire a web designer to implement unique trigger warning and consent tools to make the information we have collected and illustrated accessible to any and all audiences.

This student-led initiative grant aimed to raise awareness on women’s rights and domestic violence in the Osh region in Kyrgyzstan. The grantee conducted a 3 days exhibition about women’s rights that targeted young girl audiences in the region. The grantee also organized an event titled “Women’s rights are Human Rights” in conjunction with the exhibition. The event included an introduction of the art-exhibition and its goals; a session on Human Rights and Women’s rights in Kyrgyzstan from the legal point of view and a presentation that discussed topics like domestic violence and rights to education in Kyrgyzstan.

This student grant supported the grantee’s summer internship at Mana Public Arts, who assembled a historical database of Black Lives Matter protest art created during the summer and fall of 2020. Through this experience, the grantee observed that the art world has entered a pivotal moment and that institutionalized museums are attempting to take responsibility for systematic racism and elitism ingrained in society and the Arts. The internship with Mana Public arts allowed the grantee to continue working within the art field and working with artists advocating for equality. Having interned remotely previously, the grantee was able to begin in-person training with the institution, attend events and work on-the-ground with mural artists. The CHRA grant provided travel expenses and compensation for the grantee.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They developed the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee developed a series of photographs and interviews entitled “Behind the Garage Doors,” on the garage culture in Belarus.

For her student-led initiative project, the grantee shot a documentary about a childhood dream and children whose childhood passes in difficult living conditions. The film stemmed from the grantee’s observation on how the countryside may eventually overwhelm this instinctual childhood capacity to dream. The film documented a carefree Kyrgyz boy named Bekzhan who dreamt of becoming a boxer, who personifies the tension between childhood innocence and the reality of physical labor endured by children in the remote regions of the countryside of Kyrgyzstan. The film sought to explore the simplicity of village life framed through the lens of childhood and the growing expectations that come with working life for children in the remote regions of the countryside of Kyrgyzstan. This documentary film was featured on international film festivals such as Atlanta Docufest, Social Impact Media Awards, Durango Independent Film Festival and Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival.

Identifying air pollution as one of the main environmental issues in Bishkek, the student grantee proposed to create a mural on the Sovetskaya-Kievskaya bridge in the capital Bishkek. The mural featured colorfu images that would attract passengers, written resources explaining the critical problems of air pollution, and recommendations on how people could help solve the issue. The project aimed to enlighten about 500 people and attract local NGOs and state agency’s attention on environmental issues and state-level solutions. The grantee also organized an opening ceremony to unveil the mural, which involved the city’s representatives and local organizations, as well as the public.

This student grant supported the grantee’s research in preparation for an experimental documentary on what it means to be a young person living and growing up inside of New York City. The documentary centered on the stories of two young people the grantee met while working in an elementary school in East NY, Brooklyn. The project was inspired by the genius and under-appreciated characters of young people. The documentary project would engage in critical dialogues with the “documentary” form, and resist the exploitative, harmful processes that some documentary filmmakers adopt, and instead propose a more inclusive, creative and immersive space that lets the subjects narrate their own story.

In summer 2021, CHRA supported four students from the Human Rights and International Law Program at Al-Quds Bard to support their internships at different human rights organizations. The grantee completed an internship at the Community Action Center in East Jerusalem. The grantee monitored and reported on daily news in Jerusalem as a method of documenting events and abuses committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians. The internship activities helped her realize how reporting is an important feature of human rights monitoring cycle and strategy of a field presence. At the end of the internship, The grantee compiled a report based on the information she obtained and the breaches of human rights she documented. This report provided a detailed violation table that discusses a wide range of infractions aimed at Jerusalemites from a variety of perspectives.

With the CHRA student-led initiative grant, the grantee initiated “I am the changemaker”, a project aimed at cultivating English and digital literacy skills of 20 Palestinian refugee girls aged between 6 to 10 years old in Mar Elias Refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. The project’s goals were to equip the girls with fundamental knowledge of the English language and the ability to use internet tools to access free educational English language resources. The CHRA grant supported the student grantee with securing equipment and materials needed for a two-phase program, including learning through creative methods such as arts and crafts, and digital literacy sessions.

This student-led initiative grant supported Written Voices, a non-profit civic-engagement project that aimed to enhance and develop creative writing of the Palestinian community. With the CHRA grant, the grantee facilitated Written Voices to publish the first book that compiled writings from students with whom the organization worked with, conducted the first creative writing contest in Palestine, and organized the second annual Written Voices summer camp that involved more than 50 participants. The expected impact of these three different initiatives was to introduce creative writing to all segments of the Palestinian community, and create a safe and motivating space for people to express themselves through writing.

This student-led initiative project focused on the architectural heritage on the Bahnar Tomb House Statue, a cultural conservation project aiming to preserve cultural values in the sculpture of Bahnar ethnic minority people in Kon Tum province. The grantee documented the sculptures and digitized the documentations the Internet, creating access for the next generation of the Bahnar and international community. The project aimed at celebrating the cultural treasures of Bahnar, preserving the folk sculpture, and fostering the development of all kinds of folk art forms, so that the Tomb House Statue could become more familiar to young generations through arts, social media, and education. As a member of the Bahnar community, the grantee identified several problems in conserving the Bahnar tomb house statue. First, sculpture methods have gradually gone extinct with the lack of inheritors of traditional skills. Secondly, young people didn’t have enough interest in the traditional cultural and artistic values. Thirdly, the community had biases toward the art of ethnic minorities. Based on these problems, the project focused on four goals: collecting, categorizing, and digitizing Tomb House Statue, introducing Bahnar Tomb House Statue through multimedia and dynamic approaches, preserving Bahnar sculpting methods through the introduction of folk artists and raising awareness of young people about the folklore sculpture art, and thereby fostering their engagement in the preservation process.

This student grant supported the grantee’s research on the regulation of food. The grantee observed that on the one hand, regulations on the production and distribution of food are responding to crises such as climate change, on the other hand, food deserts and the lack of accessible, healthy food disproportionately faced by poor Americans and Americans of color make food freedom a dimension of social justice that demands urgent action. Greater awareness of animal rights and the cruelties of factory farming also calls for tighter controls on the standards of production. The grantee’s research examined the complex interactions of the factors noted above through reviewing materials about the history of food regulation and food justice. The research culminated to her senior project on related topics.

The grantee’s student research focused on the role of desire under ideological influence. The grantee was interested in ways in which our desires are satisfied by what we perceive from screens and the roles that the screen play within these flows of desire. The grantee was particularly interested in media genres such as social media, video games, pornography, and news. Anyone who finds themselves in a time-lapsed ‘hole’ of scrolling through social media or other platforms is faced with the fact their own agency is playing very small of a role in these actions. The importance of advertisements as the fuel of social media platforms, and internet revenue as a whole, also mediates the control aspect of the screen. The grantee’s research explored the relationship between our behaviors with the screen and the concept of freedom. The CHRA grant supported the grantee’s living expenses over the summer of 2021, and the purchase of books and research materials.

This student grant supported the grantee’s research on the effects of migration and the consequences of speaking against the federal government in Puerto Rico. The grantee participated in and observed activism movements that involved fights for independence in the island, and the abolition of discrimination against the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States. The goals for the grantee’s research were to understand how the migration in activism affect the legal body of the United States, how free community services can turn into socioeconomic issues when these services are no longer free for the community, and how college movements and organizations in the 1960s contributed to the fight for social justice and access to resources for communities of color in the US. The grantee conducted interviews with former members of the Rainbow Coalition, Young Lords Organization, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Her research also incorporated historical images and accounts.

In summer of 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant Bard College Berlin to Bard College Berlin to support six students’ internship and research projects. The grantee received a stipend to to research the long term effects of South Asian, and specifically Indian food appropriation by the British Empire on India’s attempt to achieve food justice. The grantee used her CHRA grant funds to secure equipments to conduct interviews with individuals and NGOs working on the topic of food sovereignty in India and the UK.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University to research issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights, or to participate in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They took part in the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee developed a photo exhibition entitled “Square of Changes.” Focusing on a Minsk backyard community, the photos documented confrontation between the residents of the neighborhood and the police, the protests and activism that empowered the community.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

This student-led initiative grant supported the grantee’s senior project “Jamaican De Medicis,” a multimodal ethnography examining the response of one Jamaican family to the COVID-19 pandemic. For years, the grantee had documented an elite extended family’s role in upholding Jamaica in various sectors. For her senior project, the grantee used the pandemic as the backdrop to examine what created family power, effectiveness, reputation, and influence, and how does the manifestation of these qualities of power complicate our understanding of kinship. The CHRA grant supported the grantee’s travel to Jamaica in the summer of 2021 and her bibliographic research on kinship, the political power of families and ethnographies of upper-class families in Jamaica.

This student grant supported the grantee’s summer internship at the Legal Aid Society. During the internship, the grantee worked independently and in collaboration with the lawyers and video campaigners to create mitigation videos for incarcerated people who received unfair or cruel prison sentences. The grantee also conducted interviews with incarcerated clients and their lawyers, doing research and performing additional tasks specific to the client. These 20 to 30-minute videos would be shown in a courtroom to help clients receive reduced sentences. The grantee supported the video campaign team with skills in film editing, cinematography, documentary making and general knowledge and interest in human rights advocacy. The CHRA grant supported the grantee’s living expenses over the summer of 2021.

This student internship grant supported the grantee’s remote internship at Decolonizethat.com. During the internship, the grantee maintained the website and managed social media and blog posting on the website. The grantee also ran the radical books collective and bookclub. The bookclub meets with authors of radical books outside of the corporate publishing realm and facilitates discussions with bookclub members worldwide. This internship experience informed the grantee’s senior project on the intersections of human rights and literature, and provided the grantee with new readings on decolonization.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to Bard College Berlin to support five student research projects and one student internship. The grantee conducted a two-phase research comparing two case studies: Assyrians born in the United States who have a relationship to the Aramaic language, and first-generation Kurds born in Germany who have a relationship to the Kurdish language. The research aimed to identify the accessibility and attitudes towards stateless minority languages across transnational spaces. The CHRA grant supported the grantee’s research trip to Los Angeles to conduct interviews with five Assyrians in order to understand their relationship to their language, and their experiences of growing up bilingual in the United States. The research project would help the grantee develop a master’s thesis, and fit into larger concerns on linguistic rights for minority population.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

During his internship grant at the OSUN Center for Civic Engagement, the grantee assisted the Associate Dean of Civic Engagement in developing global community engagement programs and courses. As a global engagement intern, he researched and compiled syllabi and best practices for global civic engagement courses, helped to facilitate the US Public Diplomacy Study of the US Institutes for Civic Engagement meeting in New York City, and supported the Global Commons Initiative and Virtual Student Leadership Conference.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They developed the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee conducted artistic research on the development of national identity in Belarus, entitled “Through the violence here comes a rebirth of the national identity.” His research was presented as an installation in the Biennial.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to Bard College Berlin to support one student internship and five student research grants. The grantee conducted a research entitled “The Politics of Shame: How Global Human Rights Advocacy Practices Translate into Ground-Level.” Based on human rights scholar Thomas Keenan’s 2004 essay, “Mobilizing Shame”, “naming and shaming” became prevalent as a practice used by advocacy groups to to hold human rights offenders accountable. The grantee worked with multi-national refugee-aid NGO group Collective Aid in Obrenovac, Serbia to investigate her research question “How do global “Human Rights” translate onto the work of the community center? To what degree is the community center in Obrenovac’s work guided by the larger, global assertions of Human Rights? In the organization’s advocacy work, how is shame mobilized? Under what conditions?”

This student grant supported the grantee’s senior project research on how Chinese American businesses have adapted or adjusted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing Asian hate sentiments in New York City’s Chinatown. The research identified the New York City’s Department of Small Business Services (SBS) refusal to include Chinatown’s businesses in the Hard-Hit Low and Moderate Income Communities (LMI) Program during COVID. The research also acknowledged the pandemic itself has propelled an overt racism toward the Asian community. The grantee conducted research by drawing upon multiple media resources on racist actions against Chinese American communities, comparing secondary historical of Asian American oppression, and analyzing first-hand accounts from the business owners affected by the pandemic. The grantee’s ethnography also incorporated her personal experiences in interacting with Chinatown’s environment daily.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to Bard College Berlin to support five student research projects and one student internship. The grantee initiated a research project comparing narratives about migrants in international humanitarian organizations and in migrant fictions. The grantee conducted comparative analysis of Human Rights reports such as the ones conducted by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM), and representations of migrant subjects in works of fiction such as “An Honest Exit” by Dinaw Mengestu (Bard faculty). The research concluded that while humanitarian reports erase the historical agency and subjective experience of the South-South migrant through violent effects of dehistoricization and universalization, migrant fictions propose a restorative representation of the migrant subjects.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee completed an internship at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), which focuses on research, assessment, and consultations in the sphere of establishing constitutional law and order, the system of legal values and securing human rights. Along with six other students, the grantee assisted the general activities, legal clinic and webinars organized by CCHR and deepened their knowledge on constitutional and human rights law.

This student-led initiative grant supported BOUNSERGİ, a protest-art collective founded during the Boğaziçi University resistance in Turkey. The collective aimed to promote free speech for everyone. Acknowledging that even existing is a political act sometimes, the collective aimed at creating a space to celebrate their existence. With support from the CHRA grant, the grantee released an open call across OSUN institutions for art about the freedom of speech, freedom of existence, the declaration of rights. The collected artworks were printed and exhibited in guerrilla exhibitions at Bard College Berlin. The grant also supported the launch of a website for virtual exhibitions.

In summer 2021, CHRA awarded a block grant to support fifteen student internships at the European Humanities University. The students are divided into two groups, seven students worked on researching issues pertaining to human rights and legal systems at the Center of Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CCHR), and eight students participated in the 13th Art Biennial in Kaunas by delivering lectures and attending other Biennial activities. The grantee participated in the Art Biennial in Kaunas, one of the largest international contemporary art festivals in the Baltic region along with six other European Humanities University students. They developed the project “Nemiga” (Insomnia), which included video art, performance, animation and photo exhibition. The grantee developed a project entitled “Nothing happens in my life.”

This student grant supported the student’s internship at PEN America, an organization dedicated to advocating on behalf of those who are robbed of their freedom of expression because of governmental, institutional or societal pressure. As the Free Expression and Education intern, the grantee conducted research on different case studies related to the First Amendment on college campuses, looking particularly at a case at the University of Michigan, and drafting summary and analysis pieces for PEN America’s website. The grantee observed that the state of free speech on college campuses presents a paradox: while most students believe that holistic freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, most of them also believed that certain restrictions on speech, particularly “hate speech” were necessary in order to have a safe and inclusive society. This is a paradox that the grantee explored during the internship. The research and internship contributed to the grantee’s senior project on the intersections between the literary realm and the world of human rights.

This student grant supported the grantee’s senior research on three different types of venues adopted from western culture to China that require physical exercise, namely, gyms, dance studios, and dance socials and events. The grantee researched the experiences of female-bodied people of being objectified and ways in which they negotiate with male gazes in these venues. The CHRA grant enabled the grantee to conduct interviews for this research.