Field of Study USA: Sociology

Jill Belsky

Dr. Jill Belsky is Professor Emerita from the University of Montana (UM) where she was a faculty member for 30 years, serving as Chair in the Departments of Sociology and Society and Conservation — the latter an interdisciplinary department in the College of Forestry and Conservation in which she was a founding member. She served as Director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at UM, and as Editor-in-Chief of her discipline’s flagship journal, Society and Natural Resources. Dr. Belsky received her PhD from Cornell University in 1991 in Rural Sociology with specializations in natural resources, agriculture and southeast studies. She is a nationally and locally award-winning instructor, teaching highly popular classes in society, environment and development, international conservation and development, and political ecology. Her research has been widely published, and focusses on the intersections of rural livelihoods, economy, community-based natural resources and wildlife management, and the political economy of development, conducted often in collaboration with ecological scientists, managers and practitioners across South and Southeast Asia and the US west. She enjoys hiking, Nordic skiing and biking, as well as traveling and staying in mountain villages around the world.

Dr. Belsky’s Fulbright-Nehru project seeks to enhance environmental social science capacity in India through linking interactive and innovative teaching with participant action research (PAR). Both dimensions are informed by social-ecological theory and practice, and cultural/political ecology. The PAR project will collectively address human-wildlife conflicts and livelihood challenges in the Harsil Valley of Uttarakhand. PAR methodology utilizes inclusive, mixed methods to gather data relevant to a range of constituents to develop mutually-beneficial policy and programs, and context-specific, relevant content for class lectures, curriculum development and a workshop at the Wildlife Institute of India.

John (Ike) Uri

Mr. John Uri is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Brown University. He earned his BA in Sociology from the University of Kansas in 2017, before serving as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Tajikistan. He earned an MA in Sociology at Brown University in 2020. For his master’s thesis, Mr. Uri conducted interview-based research in India, working to understand how climate adaptation – efforts to reduce vulnerability to climate change – occurs in Indian cities. Such efforts are often funded by international donors, and that project illustrated how consultants, positioned between these donors and local urban officials, are a necessary part of urban adaptation planning in India. With the support of this Fulbright grant, Mr. Uri’s dissertation research will focus on these consultants and their role in urban climate adaptation, considering adaptation efforts in the city of Mumbai.

Apart from these primary research interests, Mr. Uri has conducted research at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences (the UN climate negotiations). In this capacity, Mr. Uri has considered the negotiations from a critical perspective, paying particular attention to the topics of climate finance and adaptation, as well as the nascent issue of loss and damage.

Cities in India face intensifying risks from the climate crisis, necessitating climate adaptation (actions and policies that reduce climate vulnerability). Urban adaptation planning is increasingly common in India, often carried out by consultants. This Fulbright-Nehru project intends to focus on these consultants, who coordinate the interests of international donors and urban officials. Using ethnographic research methods, Mr. Uri aims to embed himself in a firm in Mumbai that provides these services. The goal of this project is to better understand the ‘best practices’ of urban adaptation planning and how international norms and features of local governance impact those practices.

Kasey Jacob

Kasey Jacob earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and sociology, with minors in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, and Asian, Middle Eastern studies from The State University of New York at Cortland, New York.

In her undergraduate career, Kasey participated in her university’s study abroad program in Mangaluru, India. During this program, Kasey took sociology and religion courses at St. Aloysius College. She also completed an internship at Prajna Counseling Centre, a non-government organization involved in supporting, educating, and housing children from various challenging backgrounds. Kasey’s responsibilities as an intern included providing after-school support for youth and gathering qualitative data for the center’s reporting purpose.

Following her return from India, Kasey earned her remaining course credits through an internship at West Hill Refugee Welcome Center in Albany, New York. In order to assist in the long-term transition needs of refugee and immigrant families from Afghanistan, Sudan, and Burma, Kasey led a number of youth programs to support the social, academic, and personal growth of adolescents.

After graduation, Kasey was hired as a program coordinator at West Hill Refugee Welcome Centre. In this full-time role, she coordinates adult English-language courses for single mothers; recruits, trains, and supervises university-level interns and volunteers; supports additional adult and youth programming; and evaluates program effectiveness.

Kasey is passionate about immigrant and refugee support services, community building, and advocating for accessible and equitable educational opportunities for migrant and displaced youth. After completion of her Fulbright-Nehru scholarship award, Kasey hopes to earn a master’s in educational policy and leadership.

Kasey’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is implementing a peer-mentorship program for female adolescents so that they make a successful and stable transition into adulthood. Her research involves a group of female college students and a female adolescent group. The goal of the research is to connect the adolescent group to local organizations as well as develop several programs that support their social, academic, and personal growth.

Anousha Peters

Anousha Peters is a labor, youth, and abolitionist organizer. She currently works at Labor Notes, which educates workers who are democratizing their trade unions. She also organizes with Dissenters, a youth anti-militarist organization fighting for the investment of resources in life-giving services. She previously worked with United for Respect supporting retail employees at Amazon and Walmart who were espousing the cause of dignity in their workplaces. Anousha studied sociology at Columbia University where she conducted research with professors Adam Reich and Hana Shepherd. Before transferring, she attended the liberal arts program of Deep Springs College in California for two years. Originally from Gainesville, Florida, Anousha’s professional and political interests have focused on marginalized and precarious workers. She enjoys running, watercolor painting, listening to podcasts, and bringing together and hosting friends.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Anousha is studying women’s participation in platform gig work in India wherein freelance workers are connected to consumers through online marketplaces. She is studying the reasons behind women taking up such work, the workingconditions they encounter, and their feelings of safety and agency in their work. While the study is focusing on the city of Hosur in the outskirts of Bengaluru, its learnings will find use across India and beyond since gig work is growing globally and is often conducted on transnational platforms.

Neha Basu

Neha Basu, a Rhode Island native, graduated from Pitzer College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology. Her honors-level senior thesis was called “The Collection Being More than the Sum of the Parts: The Role of Identity Integration and Racialization in Multiracial Students’ Experiences”, for which she conducted a survey and interviews with multiracial college students. Neha has served as a student representative on the Faculty Executive Committee as a fellow at the Writing Center. In 2023, she was fortunate to collaborate with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in street vending research and policy advocacy, which sparked her interest in global street vending regulation as an intersection of various social and political factors. She has received the Kallick Community Service Award in recognition of her work in this area. In the future, Neha plans to attend law school, with the goal of becoming a movement attorney.

Street food vendors are a key part of urban life in India, yet they are excluded from the formal economy and often face restrictive regulations, making vending an interstice of sociopolitical, economic, and legal forces. These come together for street vendors in Kolkata, where such vending falls within the jurisdiction of two recently passed national- and state-level laws designed to regulate the practice. Neha’s Fulbright-Nehru project is utilizing a participatory action methodology to investigate the nature of Kolkata vendors’ interactions and navigations in terms of the law, what the local vending landscape reveals about conceptions of public space, and what it reveals about culture and economic factors.