The Department of Defense and the U.S. Institute of Peace today announced fellowship awards to 19 graduate students to research questions in the fields of conflict management and peacebuilding. DoD and USIP selected the 2024-2025 Minerva-USIP Peace and Security Scholar Fellows from a pool of 145 applicants for their demonstrated potential to advance these social science fields and drive future policies and practices.
Since 2017, the Minerva Research Initiative, a DoD-sponsored, university-based social sciences program focused on topics of relevance to U.S. national security, has joined the U.S. Institute of Peace's Peace Scholar Fellowship program to award one-year non-residential fellowships to doctoral candidates enrolled in U.S. universities. The awards support research related to broad concerns in global security.
"These fellowships support advanced graduate students researching the intertwined political, economic, and social dynamics of international conflict and conflict management. Their insights directly inform DoD's approaches for promoting global peace and stability – one of its fundamental missions," said Dr. David Montgomery, DoD's director of social science.
The 2024-2025 Peace and Security Scholar Fellows include:
2024-25 Minerva-Funded Peace and Security Fellows
- Nangyalai Attal (University of Massachusetts), "Reclaiming the Critical Primacy of Nonviolent Jihad: A Case Study of Violent Jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the Legacy of U.S.-sponsored Textbooks"
- Lisa de Sousa Dias (University of Wisconsin-Madison), "Escaping Violence, Returning Home: Disparate Political Belonging Among Refugees and Internally Displaced Populations in Post-Conflict Mozambique"
- Julian Gerez (Columbia University), "The Political Economy of Supply-Side Counternarcotics"
- Elizabeth Good (Northwestern University), "Willing and Able: Power Dynamics and Women's Representation in Peace Processes"
- Suha Hassen (George Mason University), "Investigating How and Why People Join the ISIS Terrorist Organization: A Comparative Study of Iraqi, Arab, and International Ex-Fighters Inside the Iraqi Prisons"
- Whitney Hough (Teachers College, Columbia University), "Teachers as Transformative Agents During Protracted Conflict: A Case Study of Cameroon"
- Katherine Irajpanah (Harvard University), "Small Arms and Influence: How Decolonial Norms Disrupted Military Superiority"
- Julia Raven (University of California at Berkeley), "The Origins of Ethnic Stacking: The Design and Durability of Colonial Militaries"
- Nikoleta Sremac (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities), "History in Whose Hands? Gendering Collective Memory of the Yugoslav Wars in Serbia"
- Kristin Weis (George Mason University), "Arctic Change: Charting the Relationship Between Sense of Place, Social-ecological Resilience, and Conflict"
- Lily Wojtowicz (American University), "Extended Nuclear Deterrence: How Allies Assess Credibility During Credibility Crises"
- Ilyssa Yahmi (Temple University), "Business in Conflict: The Effects of Smuggling on the Production of Violence"
2024-25 USIP/Minerva-Co-Funded Peace and Security Fellow:
- María Ballesteros (Harvard University), "How Rebels Become States: Essays on Post Civil War State Building"
2024-25 USIP-Funded Peace Fellows
- Nicholas Blanchette (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "Strategies of Capability Revelation: How States Reveal Information about Advanced Nuclear and Conventional Military Technologies"
- Eleanor Freund (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "Strategies of Security Cooperation: External Balancing in Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949-Present"
- Mirella Pretell Gomero (Syracuse University), "Beyond the Oil Pipeline: Environmental Injustices and Indigenous Women's Struggles in the Northern Peruvian Amazon"
- Isabel Güiza-Gómez (University of Notre Dame), "Landing Peace: Rural-Poor Mobilization and Land Redistribution in Civil War Political Transitions"
- Eyal Hanfling (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "Lurking but Learning: The Effects of WhatsApp on Intergroup Cooperation in India"
- Nicolás Torres-Echeverry (University of Chicago), "Between War and Peace: Political Organizing in Twenty-First Century Colombia"
The competition for the 2025-2026 cohort opens in September 2024. Visit the Peace Scholar Fellowship Program on USIP's website to access the 2025-2026 request for applications.
The Minerva Research Initiative is jointly administered by the Basic Research Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Strategy and Force Development Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in partnership with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office, and Office of Naval Research. To learn more about Minerva's partnership with USIP, visit https://minerva.defense.gov/Programs/US-Institute-of-Peace-Collaboration/.
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