SIT names two outstanding Independent Study Projects

November 22nd, 2016   |   SIT Study Abroad

Photo - NPT Taksang Goernpa

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 SIT Study Abroad Undergraduate Research Award. These two students were chosen from a very competitive pool of 25 nominations drawn from more than 2,000 Independent Study Projects (ISP) completed over the past three semesters. Both will be nominated for the Forum on Education Abroad award for Academic Achievement Abroad. The SIT winners are:

Katherine Hirsch (Tufts University) for “A Critical Analysis of the Public Sphere: How the LGBTQ Movement Occupies and Utilizes Space in Morocco,” written on the Morocco:  Multiculturalism and Human Rights program in spring 2016. The work examines the ways LGBTQ individuals and organizations deploy public spaces in their resistance to a system that sidelines and represses sexual difference. “Her ISP is exemplary for a study abroad research endeavor,” writes program Academic Director Taieb Belghazi.

Henry Wilson-Smith (Stanford University) for “More Religious and Less Moral: The Changing Face of Religious Coexistence in Ladakh,” completed in fall 2015 on the program Nepal: Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples. Academic Director Isabelle Onians writes, “This is a brilliant piece of work with a plethora of original data presented with impartiality, a sense of nuance and consummate art.”

Click here to find out more about the importance of independent research to SIT Study Abroad programs.