Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Field of Specialization:	Law
Name:	Ms. Sandra Gresl
Official Address:	University of Washington WA
Indian Host Institution:	Swayam, Kolkata
Duration of Grant & Start Date :	Duration: 9 months August 2011

Brief Bio:

Ms. Sandra Gresl has been engaged in social service work, legal aid efforts, and human rights advocacy on issues related to gender and sexuality, immigration, and violence for nearly ten years. She recently completed her law degree with a public interest concentration at University of Washington School of Law. Prior to entering law school, she worked as a women's advocate at Chaya, a Seattle-based domestic violence resources center for South Asian women and families. She also served on both the King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence Board of Directors as well as the Washington State Coalition for Language Access steering committee. While in law school, she interned at a range of organizations including Women's Link Worldwide, in Bogota, Colombia and Legal Voice and Northwest Justice Project in Seattle Washington. In her free time, she volunteered as support group co-facilitator with the Northwest Network for Bi, Trans, Lesbian, and Gay Survivors of Abuse and QLaw's LGBT legal clinic. The title of Ms. Gresl's Fulbright-Nehru research is "Thinking Beyond Jurisdiction: Local and Transnational Advocacy Strategies to Support Women and Families Who Experience Domestic Violence" This research primarily aims to identify strategies that NGOs as well as less formalized networks employ in order to more meaningfully support women whose lives are unfolding not only upon varied cultural landscapes but also across multiple legal jurisdictions. She will investigate how individual community policy level advocacy efforts incorporate the emerging needs of men and women who migrate to foreign countries and create families that are mobile and exist across national borders - transnational families that occupy transnational juridical spaces.