Samira Abed
Degree: MFA, writing; poetry
Research project: My Nakba Story: Narratives from Palestinian Survivors and their Descendants in Jordan
Destination: Jordan
Home city: Fresno, California

“The Nakba, which can be defined as the ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from their native homes into nearby and faraway countries for the past 76 years, has resulted in a critical shift in the relationship Palestinians hold to their land, their communities, and their identity. As a Palestinian-American poet, this archival work is incredibly important for my poetry thesis, which is concerned with the definition of the self. The Stanley Award for International Research funding will be an incredible asset, allowing me to spend real time working directly with archival resources, conduct interviews, and partner with local organizations in Jordan, which otherwise I would not have been able to afford.”

Andrea Avey
Degree: MFA, literary translation
Research project: On Memory: Translating Luciana Sousa's Novel "Cuando Nadie Nos Nombre"
Destination: Argentina
Home city: Tulsa, Oklahoma

“I will be traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to conduct linguistic, cultural, and historical research for my literary translation of a novel by contemporary Argentine author Luciana Sousa. The novel is deeply informed by its geographical context and brings critical attention to La Pampa Province, its communities, and its complicated, often overlooked history. The Stanley Award is providing crucial support for this project, which will form the basis of my MFA thesis.”

Uchenna Awoke
Degree: MFA, creative writing; fiction
Research project: A Literary Intervention into the Subject of Violence on the African Continent: The Conflict Between the Fulani Herdsmen and Sedentary Farmers
Destination: Ghana
Home city: Nsukka, Nigeria

“My project explores the conflict between the Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers. As a storyteller, I’m interested in projects that look beyond the surface level to the depth and nuances of societal breakdowns while evoking the terror, futility, and alienation of life in the wake of oppression or violence. With the Stanley Award, I will be able to investigate more fully the complexities of the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers in the West African subregion—the intricate web of interconnected factors and variables—to give my novel the scope and depth it needs.”

Shruthi Bannur
Degree: PhD, community and behavioral health
Research project: Understanding Tobacco Use and Oral Health Implications Among Women in Peri-Urban Areas of Bangalore: A Qualitative Study
Destination: India
Home city: Bangalore, Karnataka

“I will examine perceptions, motivations, and patterns of individual nicotine and tobacco product (NTP) use and exposure to secondhand smoke and its perceived impact on oral health among women in peri-urban regions. This award will lay the groundwork for my dissertation by supporting preliminary research and building collaborations with researchers and community partners in Bangalore and will contribute to my long-term goal of improving oral health outcomes for disadvantaged populations by leveraging tools of interdisciplinary and community-based research.”

Sarah Anjum Bari
Degree: MFA, nonfiction writing
Research project: The Marginalia of Paris
Destination: France
Home city: Dhaka, Bangladesh

“This project will use the lenses of book history, literary criticism, and memoir to explore how inscriptions, graffiti, and other informal markings on Paris's walls act as annotations - as 'marginalia' - to the stories of its streets. It seeks to find out how the corporeal act of writing and reading shapes a city that has produced such a vast body of published literature. The Stanley Award will allow me to collect photographs and personal stories centered around the city's wall inscriptions, explore archival records of graffiti practices in Paris over the decades, and engage in a close reading and analysis of the annotations to be found on its walls.”

Sabrina Bustamante
Degree: MFA, nonfiction writing
Research project: Death on Display: The Sight and Spectacle of Incorruptible Women in Medieval Christianity
Destination: France, Italy, Greece
Home city: New York City, New York

“This research is central to the completion of my thesis project. The Stanley Grant will allow me access to sources crucial to my thesis that are not available online. I will visit the bodies, shrines, and personal archives of four mystic saints whose bodies are incorruptible: a term describing bodies that do not decay (or minimally decay) as a result of divine intervention. At each religious site I visit, I will explore the display sites, observe forms of worship, and research discourses around incorruptibility to understand how these sites serve as both a morbid spectacle of death and a divine example of eternal life. The Stanley Grant will allow me access to sources crucial to my thesis that are not available online."

Shannon Casey
Degree: PhD, anthropology
Research project: From Kiln to Community: Analyzing the Medieval Ceramics at Agroal
Destination: Portugal
Home city: North Aurora, Illinois

“I will be traveling to Portugal to study the medieval ceramics of Agroal, an archaeological farmstead site in central Portugal that was occupied during both the Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE) and medieval period (13th - 17th centuries CE). As a first-year graduate student in the Anthropology department, the Stanley Award for International Research will allow me to spend valuable time analyzing the Agroal ceramics and collecting data that will facilitate the timely completion of my Master's degree and serve as preliminary research for my future Ph.D. dissertation. Additionally, the award will allow me to create lasting relationships with experts in medieval Portuguese archaeology whom I will be able to meet during my time in Portugal.”

Audrey Cerchiara
Degree: MFA, poetry
Research project: Ecopoetic Encounters with Birdlife
Destination: Costa Rica
Home city: Newburgh, New York

“My work is informed by the emerging practice of ecopoetics with a focus on the biology, conservation, and human relationship to bird life. Costa Rica is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, home to more than 800 bird species: 110 endemic species and many that migrate across North America. I will participate in close observation in this very special living archive in order to craft poems that can communicate knowledge of the natural world -- and the human enterprises that threaten its stability -- across various fields, epistemologies, politics, and aesthetics. With the Stanley Award, I will be able to make connections and collaborations with the naturalists and biologists about their research. I will use this time to experiment with ecopoetic techniques to translate that knowledge into a door through which readers can find themselves moved to action.”

Rodney Dailey
Degree: MFA, creative writing
Research project: Lyrical Blueprints and Architectonic Poetics
Destination: Germany
Home city: Boston, Massachusetts

“I have studied environmental poetics and built environments of the modern period for quite some time, but I have not, until this grant, been able to inhabit and experience the structures I have been studying and writing toward. The opportunity to inhabit these spaces is crucial, and it is important to me because my research and poetry concerns themes of how built environments are racialized and gendered. This international research affords me the opportunity to inhabit the spaces I have been studying and researching. Also, it allows me access to an archive of the spaces I have been researching. I will be applying for advanced study in English, and this award builds a foundation for this continued study.”

Isaac Engelberg
Degree: MFA, nonfiction
Research project: Present Absence: Narratives of Gay and Orthodox Jewish Identities in Prenzlauer Berg
Destination: Germany
Home city: Los Angeles, California

“In the rapidly gentrifying Berlin neighborhood Prenzlauer Berg, I will study the dual histories of post-Holocaust Jewish revivals and post-AIDS-crisis gay lifestyles that, at times, overlap. I will seek to understand the reasons why young, diasporic queer Jews have chosen to take part in Orthodox conversions, thinking specifically about the “present absence” of German Jews after the Holocaust. This research funding will afford me the time and resources to complete my novel, a section of which will fictionalize the competing, incongruous lives of gay men and Orthodox Jews in this Berlin neighborhood -- of which the narrator is both.”

Gregory Hesse
Degree: MFA, fiction
Research project: Resistance and State Repression During the White Terror in Taiwan
Destination: Taiwan
Home city: Dallas, Texas

“I will be traveling to Taiwan to conduct archival research and visit historical sites related to the country’s White Terror Period (1947–1987) as well as its role in the global Cold War and U.S. involvement on the island at that time. This will enable me to complete my novel, which will fuse the history of dissent, political surveillance and control, and US involvement in Taiwan with a magical realist sensibility. It is only through the Stanley Grant that I will be able to afford the necessary flights and lodging to travel to and reside in Taiwan for two months during the summer. This travel is essential for me to conduct the necessary research to complete my novel.”

Akachukwu Ikefuama
Degree: PhD, mass communication
Research project: Revisiting the June 2021 Twitter Ban in Nigeria: How VPN affords resistance and amplification against digital platform regulation in pseudo-democratic regimes
Destination: Germany
Home city: Ikeduru, Nigeria

“My research focuses on the relevance of the Nigerian diaspora community in Germany and their dual roles as groups of resistance against the Nigerian government and as support systems for their countrymen experiencing state repression in Nigeria. I am particularly interested in investigating the experiences of the Nigerian diaspora in Germany during the 2021 ban on X (previously known as 'Twitter') by the Nigerian government. Receiving a Stanley Award will support my research trip to Germany, where I will spend three months gathering preliminary data for my doctoral dissertation proposal. Receiving a Stanley Award for this project will contribute to the understanding of how the diaspora community is very consequential for socio-political change in their home country, using the Nigerian case study.”

Bethany Kaylor
Degree: MFA, nonfiction
Research project: Death with Dignity: Assisted Death in Switzerland and Beyond
Destination: Switzerland
Home city: Cincinnati, Ohio

“This summer, I will travel to Switzerland, the epicenter of 'suicide tourism' and the assisted dying movement. Within my work as an essayist, I'm particularly interested in exploring how a nation's cultural and historical contexts inform social views of death and suicide. The Stanley Award will help fund my travel to Switzerland, where I will visit assisted dying clinics, conduct interviews with medical physicians, bio-ethicists, researchers, and anthropologists, and dig into historical archives. This on-the-ground research will be crucial source material for a larger narrative journalism project about death cultures.”

Christine Kim
Degree: MFA, creative writing - fiction
Research project: Tales from Under Lake Biwa
Destination: Japan
Home city: Playa del Rey, California

“I am deeply interested in the resonance between place and voice in fiction. Conducting research in Kyoto will help me complete my short story collection, which recreates and reimagines the voices of women in Heian-era Japan. Kyoto preserves aspects of Heian imperial court life impossible to experience elsewhere. In its temples, gardens, and historical residences, I will immerse myself in the period’s aesthetics and sensory details, like the way a mansion’s layout might have dictated interactions between inhabitants whose 'rooms' were formed only by hanging screens.”

Dina Kleiner
Degree: MFA, fiction
Research project: Eco-fiction and the Inner World: Illustrating the natural environment and indigenous history of Borneo’s rainforest through narrative interiority
Destination: Malaysia
Home city: Freehold, New Jersey

“I will research Sarawak’s rainforests and indigenous communities, specifically the Baduyah and Iban tribes. I will also document the jungle’s biodiversity via trips into remote areas of Borneo’s rainforests. The Stanley Grant will give me the opportunity to conduct important research for stories blending eco-fiction with an interest in the human psyche, examining how an individual’s interior environment is both refracted upon and influenced by our exterior environment and its associated historical customs."

Ko Thett Ko
Degree: MFA, creative writing
Research project: Mother Tongue and Other Tongue
Destination: Singapore
Home city: Singapore

“As a poet writing in Burmese, and as an exophonic writer, writing in English, my research is an enquiry into the interplay between my mother tongue, Burmese, and my other tongue, English. At the ISEAS Singapore I will be able to study how the Burmese Khitpor poetic idioms inspired me as an emerging poet, and how Khitpor influences continue to seep into the poems I write in English as an exophonic poet today. Would that make my mother tongue-other tongue cycle complete?”

Megan Lunny
Degree: MFA, creative writing
Research project: Recreating Goethe's Italian Journey
Destination: Italy

“I will recreate, in miniature, Goethe’s journey through Italy, in order to research and complete a novella about a narrator who is also recreating Goethe’s journey through Italy. My novella will follow my narrator through Italy as she attempts, like Goethe, to have profound reunions with the art, architecture, and literary landscapes she has devoted herself to studying, and as she—also like Goethe—is inspired by her journey to narrate the fraught story of her education. I would be unable to complete my novella without the Stanley Award, because my project is dependent on having firsthand experiences, which I do not currently have, at the sites that Goethe writes about in Italian Journey.”

Finley McVay
Degree: BA, vocal performance + Minor in Theatre Arts
Research project: Berlin Opera Academy
Destination: Germany
Home city: Mount Vernon, Iowa

“My studies at the Berlin Opera Academy will be a life-changing opportunity for me. I will get to learn from professionals within the music field on how to make it in the music and performing world. I will be able to perform as a lead in an opera on an international stage while learning about German culture. I will also be able to audition for agents and make wonderful connections to become the performer I want to be. The Stanley Award for International Research will help fund my tuition for going to the Berlin Opera Academy, so I will be able to save money on my education.”

Emma Murray
Degree: MFA, literary translation
Research project: Translating Macuilxóchitl—Precolombian Feminist Poetics
Destination: Mexico
Home city: Sonoma, California

“My research in Mexico will enable me to translate the poetry of Macuilxóchitl, an Aztec princess whose work I uncovered while investigating untranslated pre-sixteenth-century women. For almost a decade, my career has been dedicated to the amplification of female voices—first as a journalist, then as a bookseller, and now as a scholar of translation; my goal is to produce literature that captivates new audiences, rectifies historical erasures, and expands creative potential. Travel to Mexico and immersion in Nahuatl culture and language will add invaluable depth to my scholarship in precolombian Mexican literature, as well as lead me to contemporary Nahuatl poets and grant me deeper understandings of colonial and postcolonial Spanish literatures. As a feminist scholar and advocate of indigenous literatures, this opportunity will propel my future as a literary translator and enable me to bring new voices to wider audiences around the globe.”

Mishma Nixon
Degree: MFA, nonfiction
Research project: In Memoriam: Reconstruction and Reconciliation After Civil War
Destination: Sri Lanka
Home city: Colombo, Sri Lanka

“I will conduct research in the North of Sri Lanka and visit sites of war that have both been reconstructed and left untouched. I am interested in exploring the idea of the physical act of reconstruction as an act of reconciliation but also interrogate what it means to revise and sanitize the history of civil war, against the Tamil minority’s belief in the 'right to remember.' I am also interested in the act of war tourism and the ethics of accessing and experiencing memories of death and violence. My project is to also explore the position of being a 'writer on a grant' exploring these sites, and intentionally being an intruder, despite being of the same minority and having grown up in the war myself.”

Abigail Peters
Degree: MFA, creative writing; fiction
Research project: The Long Road Down to the Sea: The Lives and Losses of Working Class Women and Girls in 1960s Northern Ireland
Destination: Northern Ireland
Home city: King's Lynn, England

“I will spend time this summer in Carrickfergus and Belfast, researching the lives of working-class women and girls during the Troubles (specifically the 1960s). I am especially interested in the experience of gendered violence during the conflict and the interplay of classism and sexism against the backdrop of isolated, rural towns like Carrickfergus and its neighboring Ballycastle; united in class but divided along sectarian lines. The Stanley Award will provide me the financial opportunity to travel to Northern Ireland and access its rich archival material on the Troubles such as the CAIN archive. I will also be able to reside in Carrickfergus, the town that much of my research will be centered around. This project will form the basis of my new novel and bring to life the woman at the center of it, allowing me to continue to produce meaningful, fully-realized portrayals of the British working class and its vast and storied history.”

Theophilus Sokuma
Degree: MFA, creative writing; fiction
Research project: Reclaiming The Self in Exile
Destination: Canada
Home city: Nigeria

“I plan on documenting the steps, challenges, and emotional experiences involved in seeking asylum as an LGBTQ+ individual in Canada and also to explore the impact of place on identity. I will examine how living in an inclusive society influences the self-perception, self-expression, and overall identity of individuals who come from oppressive and repressive environments. With the support of this grant, I will be able to embark on a trip to Canada, where I will immerse myself in the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals, and through this, collect enough vital information that will be instrumental to my MFA thesis, a novel about young gay Nigerians living in exile.”

Mostafa Telfah
Degree(s): BS, biochemistry and molecular biology; BA, mathematics
Research project: Applications of Differential-Equations-Based Modeling, Classification Algorithms, and Signal Processing Methods to the Analysis and Simulation of Electroencephalographic (EEG) Recordings During a Time-Interval Task
Destination: Romania
Home city: Baghdad, Iraq (Birthplace)

“Under the guidance of my hosts at Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, I will apply differential-equations-based analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals to identify key differences in neural activity between Parkinson’s Disease patients and healthy controls performing an interval timing task. This research will be extremely valuable in furthering our project with the resources and talent at UBB, and also in improving my own knowledge and skills in applied mathematics and data science research, particularly in medical contexts in relation to my goals of practicing medicine in the future. The Stanley Award for International Research will be critical in covering the necessary costs of the trip, such as the flight and accommodations in Romania, allowing me to place more emphasis on preparation for the research beforehand and the research itself during the trip.”

Diane Vadino
Degree: MFA, book arts
Research project: Exploiting the Poster as a Means of Personal Expression: Understanding the Poster Design of the Soixant-Huitards and Contemporary Letterpress
Destination: Switzerland and France
Home city: Whitehouse Station, New Jersey

“I’ll be traveling to Switzerland to study with the world-renowned graphic designer Dafi Kuhne, attend his Typographic Printing Program, and explore the poster design of politically determined screenprinters active alongside the soixante-huitards. Without the Stanley’s support, I would not be able to attend this workshop or conduct the research and interviews of the soixante-huitard artists and activists.”

Judith Velazquez Santopietro
Degree: MFA, creative writing
Research project: Las herramientas (The Tools), a documentary poetry book on enforced disappearance during the Dirty War in Mexico
Destination: Mexico
Home city: Mexico

“The project Las herramientas (The Tools) is a documentary poetry book composed of poems that document the anthropological and forensic aspects of searching in the fields for disappeared peoples from the Dirty War era. This research will support the writing process of my poetry book, ensuring a solid manuscript by the completion of my MFA program as part of my thesis. The Stanley Award will have a significant impact on my academic research by allowing me to complete key aspects of my documentary poetry book, The Tools, a project I began during my first semester of the MFA in Spanish Creative Writing.”

Geneva Zane
Degree: MFA, poetry
Research project: Utopia: A Mytho-Poetic Study of Two Tivolis
Destination: Italy
Home city: Tivoli, New York

“My research focuses on the Italian city of Tivoli, a former villa and resort for Emperors and Popes, and the American village of Tivoli, a planned Utopia that would have exemplified the early Transcendentalist movement, had its construction not bankrupted its creator. The intersection of pleasure and morality, of excess and order, informs a lot of my work, and so I am fascinated by the connection between these two places. Without the Stanley Award for International Research, I would be unable to conduct the necessary survey of Tivoli, Italy that my project requires-- I plan to complete a thorough architectural survey of the area and contrast it with research I have already done in Tivoli, New York. Had I not received this award, this project would have remained permanently unfinished.”

Learn more about the Stanley Awards for International Research

International Programs (IP) at the University of Iowa (UI) is committed to enriching the global experience of UI students, faculty, staff, and the general public by leading efforts to promote internationally oriented teaching, research, creative work, and community engagement.  IP provides support for international students and scholars, administers scholarships and assistance for students who study, intern, or do research abroad, and provides funding opportunities and grant-writing assistance for faculty engaged in international research. IP shares their stories through various media, and by hosting multiple public engagement activities each year.