2022-2023 Awards

Adrienne Mackey
Acting, Directing & Devising
International area: United Kingdom

Assistant Professor Adrienne Mackey from UW’s School of Drama, a leader in research exploring site-based theater and interactive transmedial performance will collaborate with Josh Kopecek, founder of the UK-based immersive audio company Echoes, on a project exploring the intersections of technology, sound design and site-based performance.

Mackey and Kopecek met in 2020 when Echoes signed on to re-design TRAILOFF – Mackey’s original mobile app first created in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council two years earlier. The project aimed to expand the racial diversity of PA nature trail users by changing the face of the narratives associated with nature. The app embeds original audio dramas authored by Philly-based BIPOC artists onto paths, featuring characters rarely represented in traditional environmental programming. Scenes invoke real-world landmarks triggered by GPS positioning, creating an experience akin to site-specific theater but tailored to a single audience member and available on demand.

James Lee
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
International area: Mongolia

With rapidly increasing prevalence, autism is viewed as a global health concern that affects 1% of the world’s children and their family members. Despite its prevalence, most autism research is inequitably centralized in the Western nations, particularly the United States. While we have made scientific strides, this inequity has also caused homogeneity in participant demographics and underrepresentation of autism communities around the globe. The inequity affects each country differently, but it exacerbates the challenges especially in low- to middle-income countries, such as
Mongolia. In Mongolia, there are virtually no services or professionals who can provide any related services for autistic children and their families. In our previous studies, Mongolian caregivers of autistic children reported mostly negative experiences, needs, and barriers, including access to evidence-based practices for autism. In response to these disparities of autism care in many countries, the World Health Organization developed the Caregiver Skills Training (CST), which is a training program that teaches basic behavior management skills that are often needed for caregivers of autistic children. Although CST can be widely disseminated among Mongolian families, it has not been translated or adapted to fit the needs of Mongolian caregivers due to logistical difficulties and costs. Therefore, there are two goals in this project: (1) conducting rigorous cultural adaptation and translation of the CST materials, and (2) demonstrating community-academic partnership and a model for global collaboration.

Benjamin Bryden
UW Family Medicine
International area: Lesotho

The Lesotho Boston Health Alliance (LeBoHA) Family Medicine Specialty Training Program (FMSTP) is an accredited postgraduate speciality training program offering a Master of Medicine (MMed) in Family Medicine and the only educational institution of its type in Lesotho. In Lesotho, family physicians are trained to care for all patients and provide comprehensive medical care for a community. Ultrasound is a critical part of delivery of comprehensive medical care and high quality point of care ultrasound improves care by providing immediate diagnostic information. The goal of this project is to collaborate with the LeBoHA FMSTP faculty to train faculty and family medicine residents on point of care ultrasound (POCUS) and evaluate use of POCUS by family physicians in Lesotho. In resource-poor district hospitals where family physicians typically work in Lesotho, X-ray, CT, MRI, and other imaging services are limited or non-existent and this project aims to train family physicians to provide advanced diagnostic information through POCUS. The project intends to provide virtual training of faculty and residents followed by an in-person workshop using a training-of-trainers model, where Lesotho-based faculty may be equipped to teach this topic and provide POCUS services following the project.

Brian Polagye
Mechanical Engineering
International area: United Kingdom

Mitigating the effects of climate change requires “deep decarbonization” of energy systems through a combination of energy efficiency and unprecedented expansion of low-carbon generation sources. In recent years, land-based wind has marked an important milestone with generation costs falling below parity with thermal generation sources. However, in the U.S., land-based wind resources are often located far from urban areas – the same load centers that will need to consume significantly more renewable electricity as transportation and heating are decarbonized. Offshore wind resources are in closer proximity, but presently have higher costs. For this reason, the U.S. has set a target of 30 GW of capacity by 2030 and the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced an “EarthShot” to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind by 70% by 2035. The nature of the U.S. continental shelf, particularly on the Pacific coast, precludes the use of fixed bottom wind platforms. Consequently, a dramatic reduction in floating platform cost would enable rapid expansion of offshore wind generation. At the same time, U.S. coastal waters are a critical component of ocean ecosystems and have multiple existing users, including commercial and tribal fisheries. Equitable offshore wind development must maintain and enhance environmental and societal compatibility, not disrupt ecosystems or displace traditional users.

The U.K. is a world leader in offshore wind and, consequently, has direct experience with these issues. This project’s goal is to build collaboration between UW and the SuperGen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) academic cluster that leads to bi-lateral research proposals on technical, environmental, and societal aspects of offshore wind. This application supports in-person attendance at the autumn 2023 SuperGen Assembly and dialogue with researchers at the University of Aberdeen and other SuperGen institutions. Proposal development will be pursued over the following six months, coinciding with the applicant’s academic sabbatical.

Tyler Fox
Human Centered Design & Engineering
International area: Global

We propose a workshop series as the proof-of-concept for future research-through-design undertakings focused on climate change, specifically climate migration. Examples of climate migration impact abound. The recent floods in Pakistan have consumed up to 30% of the land area, displacing millions of people. According to the World Bank by 2050, up to 38.5 million people could be compelled to move within the African Basin countries due to climate factors. Adverse climate conditions continue to impact the US. These workshops will act as a launch point for speculating about broader issues of climate change, and how society may respond to our uncertain future.

Building on local and international partnerships, we will run two research-through-design workshops, drawing inspiration from a project initiated by our local partner Forest Health Watch (FHW). In collaboration with Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR), FHW recently initiated a small citizen science project that explores dieback of Western Red Cedars, and the assisted migration of affected trees from Oregon to Washington. We will work with our partners to invite local community representatives to help us consider what assisted migration might look like in future scenarios and contexts. Participants will draw on their own experiences and expertise to collaboratively construct representations of current and future relations to our natural environment.

Sameer Shah
School of Environmental & Forest Sciences
International area: India

Significant investment in adaptation is required to reduce the stress of climate change on global agriculture (Bezner Kerr et al., 2022). Adaptation must reduce disproportional climate risks experienced by farmers marginalized by systems of oppression. In India – a global agricultural giant – caste, class, and patriarchy perpetuate procedural and distributive injustices that exacerbate climate impacts. Expectedly, marginalized groups may not participate or benefit from adaptation planning. Further, adaptation can increase privileged groups’ control of resources, like water. Therefore, “maladaptation” – deepening resource exclusions for marginalized communities and increasing their exposure to climate-related risks – remains an urgent concern. We seek funding to develop an object-detection algorithm using Machine Learning to identify agricultural maladaptation activities in drought-prone India. We focus on the case of farm ponds in Maharashtra, which were subsidized by the government’s $1.3B program to create 25,000 “drought-free” villages. Larger-landed farmers build ponds as enormous above-ground structures, and line them with a plastic sheet. This lining enables them to extract significant volumes of groundwater, without fear of it percolating back into the ground, to intensify water-intensive cultivation systems. Lined ponds deepen inequities, unsustainabilities, and inefficiencies of water distribution and use in drought-hit villages (Shah et al. 2021; Shah & Harris, 2022; Sidhu & Shah, unpub.). Thousands of these ponds are maladaptive because they increase spatial and temporal agricultural risks, particularly for marginalized groups. Using satellite imagery, we will develop, validate, and publish an object-detection algorithm by end-2023 to identify lined ponds in one drought-prone village (Kadwanchi, 19°55’11.71″N, 75°59’54.82″E) where Shah and Sidhu manually-identified 275 ponds using satellite imagery.

Martine DeCock
School of Engineering and Technology, Tacoma
International area: Canada

Chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer are the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.. People with chronic conditions have disease-specific symptoms as well as common symptoms such as pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and mood disorders. Self-management educational programs have shown effectiveness in reducing symptom burdens. However, the problem remains stubbornly resistant to conventional approaches, with 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures spent to address chronic diseases.

Innovative machine learning (ML) applications could drive more robust and comprehensive self-management solutions to significantly improve the lives impacted by chronic diseases. Development and deployment of ethical ML systems in this domain is highly non-trivial because of privacy concerns (use of very personal data) and equity concerns (ML based healthcare applications carrying inherent historical and societal biases in the data, leading to unfair and biased treatments for underrepresented groups).

Throughout 2023, our cross-disciplinary team, consisting of faculty from Computer Science and Nursing at UW Tacoma and UW Seattle, will lay critical groundwork to surmount these challenges. We ask for seed funding to start a collaboration on this topic with an expert in fair ML at HEC Montreal and to collect results for the first joint papers by our U.S.-Canada team in the first half of 2023. This will strengthen our position to attract external funding to continue our research, including the open NSF-NSERC call on collaborative research opportunities in Artificial Intelligence (NSF 22-031). We plan to submit external grant proposals in the second half of 2023.

Amos Nascimiento
Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Tacoma
International area: Global

This project has multiple goals aligned with the OGA priorities: the first is to promote interdisciplinary collaboration on critical theory and discourse ethics by working with the HI-NORM Research Cluster’s partners (33 faculty and students, 8 departments and schools, 3 UW campuses, 14 universities, 20 countries, and 5 continents); secondly, to revive international partnerships which were disrupted by the global pandemic of COVID-19, based on 4 Areas of Focus (race relations, environmental interactions, gender identities, and global migration)which speak to issues of environmental sustainability and diversity, equity, and accessibility. To pursue these goals, we will reappraise critical theory and discourse ethics and map their influence and application to human rights worldwide by promoting multi-directional relationships with our global partners, guided by three questions: 1. How are critical theory and discourse ethics being promoted and applied to human rights worldwide today? 2. How can we evaluate these applications in light of the HI-NORM cluster’s new decolonial agenda? 3. How can we harness these contributions, applications, and critiques in order to strengthen a discourse-ethical theory of human rights and affirm the role of HI-NORM as a global center for research and practice on “normative innovation”? The funding provided by the OGA will help us implement the concrete activities in 2022-2024: a) to update the HI-NORM website to publicize the cluster’s work internationally; b) hold monthly hybrid meetings to promote discussions and evaluate our work; c: promote events showcasing research on critical theory, discourse ethics, and human rights at UW and worldwide; d) support reading groups, COIL courses, and publications involving faculty, students, and community partners; host an international conference. This will help us place UW as the center of discussions on “normative innovation” worldwide.

Holly Barker
Anthropology/Curator for Oceanic & Asian Culture, Burke Museum
International area: Micronesia

From February 9-12, 2023, the Burke Museum will host a four-day research and documentation activity centering Indigenous Micronesian STEAM knowledge carried through the Arts (the “A” in STEAM). THe museum-centered STEAM research will document the conservation of a prominently exhibited Chuukese canoe and underscore how the care and repairs of the canoe constitute research. More specifically, the canoe is Romanum and the cultural protocols and understanding about repairs resides only with Romanum canoe practitioners. Mario and Lolobeyong Benito (Romanum) will replace stanchions and relash the canoe while collaborators document and consider the applied STEAM components. In conjunction with the research through conservation, grant participants will identify and document the STEAM components of weaving and wave piloting. Data from the research will spark Micronesian-led grant writing, curriculum development, and teaching opportunities. This project will connect research and curriculum development spanning three nations, five disciplines, four universities, and involve Micronesian community leaders across Washington State beyond Seattle.

Cindy Trevino
Department of Psychiatry
International area: Colombia

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life are critical for brain development. Exposure to poverty during this window places children at risk of failing to meet their social and economic potential. Inadequate cognitive stimulation (e.g., access to age-appropriate learning/play materials and responsive caregiving) is one of the mechanisms linking poverty to child development, and caregiver-focused interventions that promote cognitive growth have been shown to improve outcomes. However, major gaps in implementation limit the delivery of current approaches internationally, particularly for caregivers who might benefit most (e.g., low-resource, rural communities). Our team is focused on supporting caregivers and improving learning environments for young children affected by poverty. The study proposed will lay the groundwork for collaboration between our UW team and Dr. Giraldo-Huertas and his team in Bogota, Colombia, with the long-term goal of conducting a randomized trial testing a remote, parent- focused cognitive stimulation intervention for children and families living in rural areas of Bogota. In collaboration with Dr. Christakis and his partnership with KiwiCoTM, we will plan to use and adapt their developmentally appropriate toy and caregiver-informational guides for this project. Activities include (1) a stakeholder meeting (including parents, early childhood educators, psychologist, pediatrics, and public health) to ensure alignment with program goals and to assess local capacities for remote intervention and (2) engage stakeholders to identify cultural and linguistic adaptations to the intervention materials (KiwiCoTM toys and information guides). Deliverables will include a white paper summarizing stakeholder meeting findings, a ‘journal club’ for investigators and trainees from UW and Universidad de La Sabana, two extramural grant applications by new investigators from our team, and a revised intervention protocol and culturally and contextually appropriate materials.

Lesley Steinman
Health Systems and Population Health
International area: Cambodia

Mental health is a major public health and human rights issue. Depression and anxiety impact one in four people(1) and lead to lost health, misery, early death, and economic burden.(2) A leading cause of disability worldwide,(3) 80% of the mental illness burden falls on people in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).(4) Cambodia is an LMIC under-represented in the global mental health research (e.g., recent reviews of brief screening tools(5) and of interventions(6) found no studies in Cambodia). While there are commonalities in how mental health is experienced around the world,(7) it is important to understand Cambodian’s unique context (including the devastating Khmer Rouge period in 1970s when one-quarter of their population was wiped out including much of their health professionals(8)) to design more culturally appropriate solutions.(9)

We are applying for GIF funding to build upon and expand partnerships and learnings from our Nov 2019 project to create and validate a brief mental health screener in Cambodia. We have an opportunity to leverage other funding to adapt and deliver a collaborative care model (CCM) to improve access to quality mental health care in two rural Cambodian provinces. CCM was developed at UW and aligns with global mental health field’s urgent call to address inequities and close the treatment gap in resource-constrained settings(1,10,11) by building capacity among non-mental health providers to provide effective team-based care.(11) CCM can improve access to quality mental health care by expanding availability of care in settings with limited access, workforce gaps, and stigma.(12–14) Delivered by care managers, CCM can also address unmet social needs that drive health outcomes like poor housing and food insecurity.(15) Since 80% of Cambodians live in rural areas with limited access to adequate living conditions, economic opportunities and health care;(3) adapting CCM for this context offers tremendous opportunity to improve health equity.

Colleen “Cricket” Keating and Michelle Habell-Pallan
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
International area: Ecuador

The past two decades have been a period of intense political, economic, and social and cultural contestation, experimentation, and transformation across Abya Yala (the Americas).* In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile, for example, constitutional reform efforts have been animated by struggles to recase these countries as “plurinations” that respect and secure the sovereignty of indigenous groups, to embrace diverse definitions of democracy; the economy, the family, and to codify and to expand the rights of nature.

Growing out of these struggles, the Plurifeminsms Across Abya Yala project brings together scholars from across the region in an international research collaborative that aims to advance scholarships on the ways Indigenous, Black, Chicanx, queer, and feminist scholars, artists, and activists are weaving music, art, and culture together with attention to the institutional and structural formations to create more inclusive and just political frameworks across the region. Such work has been crucial in addressing issues such as indigenous sovereignty, extractivism, gender violence, sexuality, and reproductive rights. This work has also pointed the way to a specifically “plurifeminist” approach to struggles for social, cultural, and economic transformation, one that is explicitly pluri-epistemic, plurinationalist, plurilinguistic, and plurigendered.

The primary goal of our project is the production of an edited volume of original essays that elaborate a plurifeminist approach to social, economic, cultural, and political transformation.

Jane Simoni and Weichao Yuwen
Global Health, Psychology, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Population Health Nursing, Tacoma
International area: China

Men who have sex with men (MSM) bear a disproportionate burden of HIV and mental health problems in China, hindering HIV-related care engagement and medication adherence. mHealth interventions have shown promising effects in improving mental health outcomes but have not been explored much among MSM in China. We aim to address this urgent mental health need and health disparities among HIV-positive MSM by developing a culturally sensitive mHealth psychosocial intervention. Based on the results from a previous needs assessment study (Wang et al., under review), we designed a multi-level, mHealth intervention with a focus on mental health-related individual coping skills training and community staff capacity building. This project aims to develop a training program for SCMC staff to facilitate the weekly skill groups as part of the intervention.

We will start IRB applications and set up the project team composed of researchers from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Central South University, and University of Washington, local community-based organization (CBO) staff in Shanghai and Changsha (Jan-Feb 1st 2023). Interview guidelines will be developed in close collaboration with SCMC staff and will go through 2-3 rounds of review (Feb-March 1st 2023). We will interview 10-15 CBO staff members from two research sites in Shanghai and Changsha to understand their preference for the training program and supervision (Mar-May 1st 2023). The interview will be transcribed and analyzed using content analysis in ATLAS.ti (May-July 1st 2023). The project team will interpret and synthesize the results (July-September 1st 2023) to develop a training protocol for CBO staff (Sep-Nov 1st 2023). We will pilot test the training protocol with 10 CBO staff to acquire qualitative and quantitative feedback on its acceptability and feasibility (Nov 2023-Jan 2024). Lastly, we will utilize the feedback to finalize the training protocol (Jan-Feb 2024).

Sarah Iribarren
Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics
International area: Ecuador

Malnutrition in all of its forms affects one in three people globally and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly faced with the double burden of malnutrition that includes undernutrition as well as increasing obesity and diet related non-communicable diseases.The Ecuadorian Amazon has one of the greatest biological and cultural biodiversity on the planet. Currently Indigenous Amazonian populations are experiencing a nutritional and epidemiological transition from nomadic forested/jungle environments with wild and cultivated food to urban and peri-urban settings (or going back and forth). Migrating to the cities provides opportunities for their children to attend school and for informal day labor activities, however, it has also led to drastic changes in diet and exposure to factors typical of modern food and market environments leading to negative health outcomes. These populations are one of the last to transition and participate in globalization making this work critical and timely.

Our team seeks to understand the nutritional transition and the role of food environments for Indigenous Amazonian populations such as the Waorani and identify strategies for capacity for enhancing community resilience to poor health outcomes such as obesity and chronic diseases.

Our aims are to:
Aim 1: Characterize the food environments of Indigenous Amazonian families with children attending public primary schools in urban cities of the Ecuadorian Amazon by evaluating geospatial mapping of food environment types, locations, density, and distance.
Aim 2: Describe the transition using community led photo diaries (e.g., food preparation sites, eating environments, participatory social mapping) and focus groups and semi-structured interviews.

The ultimate goal is to expand food environment research in LMICs which is a critical place to implement interventions to support sustainable diets and address the global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change. Identifying challenges and opportunities will place this team in a position to co-develop and evaluate interventions with these communities to support sustainable diets for enhancing human and planetary health.

Arzoo Oslanoo
Law, Societies, and Justice
International area: Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Cuba, Palestine, Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua, Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe

Economic sanctions have fast become a favored tool for Euro-American foreign policy. In the post-war period, western sanctions initially targeted a select few “pariah” states, but today, U.S. sanctions have proliferated around the world. Currently, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are living under some form of stringent U.S. sanctions. As a result, the severe economic contraction these societies face, as well as international isolation and restriction of movement means that sanctions have embedded themselves in the everyday lives of people from Latin America to Africa, Asia, and Eurasia. The Anthropology of Sanctions: Lives Lived Under Sanctions, seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary array of scholars of some of the most sanctioned countries in the world to better understand what sanctions “do” on the quotidian level and what they mean for targeted societies. Scholars will discuss the impacts of sanctions in: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua, Sudan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Goals: (A) Conference, the first of a field-building exercise, with outcomes to include scholarly publications and a multi-media website for pedagogical use; (B) Edited volume for publication; and (C) Multi-media website.

Afua Yorke
Radiation Oncology
International area: Ghana, India, Philippines

The international agency for research on cancer estimate the number of new cancer cases from
2020 to 2040 will increase from twenty to over thirty-million. With a heavy burden falling on Low-
and middle income countries (LMICs). Disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer
globally due to the disparities in resource allocation with less than 5% of global cancer resources
directed towards LMICs. Studies have focused on development of new cheaper technologies for
radiotherapy (RT); however, this represents a fraction of the need. One area is insufficient
resources to carry out RT procedures of which impacts quality assurance practices and patient
safety. We assess physics quality assurance and quality management in low- and middle-income
countries. A preliminary study was conducted in 2020 to thirteen select RT centers in six countries and in 2021, our team conducted onsite visits to all the RT-centers in Ghana based on the results of the preliminary study.

Yanfang Su
Department of Global Health

The Comparative Health Systems course is a multidisciplinary course centered around the major models of financing health systems in low- and middle-income countries and the practical considerations made when designing and implementing financing and payment forms. With an emphasis on discussion-based peer learning, students will have the opportunity in-class to share their own experiences with health systems and discuss complex health systems from a comparative perspective. This course highlights various health financing mechanisms in low- and middle-income countries around the world. The case studies engage students in discussion of health financing, payment, ethics, politics, organizations, regulations, and behavioral changes in a real-world scenario.

The main aim of this course is to prepare students for applied work in economic and policy analysis related to health financing, payment, and innovative reforms. To integrate direct international collaboration and perspectives within the Comparative Health Systems course, the course will include recorded videos (e.g., mini lectures, interactive interviews), featuring Minister of Health or Minister of Finance from one of the study countries (i.e., Mexico, Colombia, China, Bolivia, Thailand, and Burkina Faso). These recorded videos will provide students with insight into the distinct health systems from a local stakeholder perspective.

Geoffrey Wallace
Department of Political Science

Last academic year I developed a new course, “Law and Violence Data Laboratory”, which I offered in Winter 2022. I subsequently submitted a new course application for a dedicated course number, which was recently approved as POL S 463. Adapting and extending laboratory models from the natural sciences, the course takes a novel approach by teaching students about data collection and measurement in the social sciences through direct and collaborative work on a real research project. The project theme for the Winter 2022 course was creating various measures for violence against journalists, which I expect to continue in several future course offerings. See the following link for the syllabus – https://tinyurl.com/yc7dz5es.

The course was very well-received by students (5.0 summative evaluation rating) – they valued exposure to the merits and challenges of data collection in ways not present in their prior studies. Nevertheless, during debriefing we discussed various ways to heighten experiential components to further deepen student understanding of measuring and studying issues related to law and violence.

The purpose of this proposal is to incorporate one such component, which involves inviting experts and activists from international human rights organizations focusing on media freedoms to interact with students by discussing how their organizations gather information on violence against journalists. These organizations differ greatly in their geographic scope, the sorts of media covered, and the types of violence gathered. The ability to hear from, and ask questions to, representatives from several of these organizations would enrich students’ experience by making more concrete the challenges and trade-offs when trying to collect such sensitive information. My objective would be to invite a total of five representatives to attend seminars virtually via Zoom, which would result in one online discussion every two weeks over the course. Representatives would be recruited from globally-oriented organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders, as well as national organizations such as the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility (Philippines) or Article 19 (Mexico).

Yen-Chu Weng
Program on the Environment

“Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation in Indigenous Communities in Taiwan”– A Virtual Field trip

“Environmental Issues of East Asia” surveys contemporary environmental issues in East Asia with a focus on understanding the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of key environmental issues in the region through a comparative lens.

Climate change is impacting communities around the world at an unprecedented pace. Indigenous communities in East Asia have long been under-represented. Nevertheless, they are at the forefront of climate change impacts. Despite their vulnerability, many indigenous groups have begun taking actions to confront these challenges. The adaptation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), community revitalization, and post-disaster recovery are some examples of how indigenous communities in East Asia demonstrate their resilience.

Collaborating with scholars and institutions from Taiwan, the proposed curriculum project will create virtual field trips to several indigenous communities in Taiwan to showcase the challenges they face and community responses. Both Dr. Lin and Dr. Chu from Taiwan have extensive experience conducting research in indigenous communities. They both also have the GIS and geospatial expertise in creating learning content through digital storytelling.

These virtual field trips will bring experiences and realities from Taiwan to students in my class. Students from Taiwan will serve as field trip guides and present case studies in my class. In reciprocity, students in my class will also create virtual field trip contents based on case studies in Washington State and share back. Through virtual meetings, students from both countries will be able to share their experiences and perspectives on this topic and learn from each other.

Overall, the proposed curriculum project will foster closer partnership between students from the U.S. and Taiwan to explore indigenous resilience as a global issue and address the justice and equity dimensions of this critical topic.

Kristen Danforth
Department of Global Health

As implementation science (IS) graduate programs grow, there is increasing interest among researchers in applying IS methods and constructs to improve implementation at scale through better execution of new and existing health policies. In summer 2023, we propose to use this Global Innovation Fund award to introduce a policy implementation science module to the Global Health Implementation Science Autumn intensive course. Expanded training in ‘Policy IS’ will position UW students to effectively engage in this emerging field. By the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. Summarize policy implementation science constructs, including
-The relationship between policy implementation science and implementation and how they differ
-The relationship between policy implementation science and policy analysis and evaluation and how they differ
2. Identify opportunities to apply policy implementation science in practice
3. Apply implementation science concepts to policy-specific questions

The module will combine in-person learning with an interactive virtual panel discussion and case study in the global context. The interactive panel discussion will introduce a cancer policy to improve screening and early detection in East Africa and allow students to hear and question how participants integrate policy IS approaches in theory and translate this into practice. The proposed panel will be comprised of international speakers including policy makers and policy IS experts from the Uganda Cancer Institute, Kenya Cancer Institute, and the US National Institutes of Health, allowing students and policy makers from low- and high-income countries to collaboratively tackle this policy challenge. In accordance with a ‘familiarize, practice, apply’ approach to learning, following the panel discussion, students will work together to adapt 2-3 traditional IS outcomes to a policy perspective in the cancer case study. A summary of the students’ applied ideas will be shared with the panelist following the session to encourage bi-directional learning.

Kalei Kanuha
School of Social Work
De-Tour: Exploring Hawaiʻi Through A De-Colonial Lens aims to critically expose, educate, and activate students about the historical and contemporary impact of colonization and militarization on the culture, traditions, and wahi pana (sacred places) of nā Kanaka ʻŌiwi (first people; Native Hawaiians), the lands and oceans, the natural environment, and the ecological well-being of Hawaiʻi. The objective of the tour is to problematize the notion “tourism” as practiced in Hawaiʻi as a commodified consequence of colonization, global capitalism, and militarization of this island nation; hence this learning opportunity is a “de-tour” from the typical Hawaiʻi visitor experience. The program title, “De-Tour” is from the book, Detours: A decolonial guide to Hawaiʻi (2019) edited by Hōkūlani K. Aikau and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzales (Duke University Press), which will serve as a required text and “guidebook” for the trip.

Alissa Billfield
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
This request is for funding to support a pre-program visit that will strengthen connections and build curriculum for a proposed Study Abroad program, Social Entrepreneurship and Population Health in India. Social Entrepreneurship and Population Health in India is a three-week immersive program examining the intersection of social entrepreneurship and population health in India and the Himalayas, conducted in partnership with the Ashoka Foundation and Naropa Fellowship.

Through this curriculum, students will learn core concepts of population health – specifically, that health and well-being are impacted by multiple overlapping and intersecting factors, including poverty, education, governance, climate, and systemic inequities – and will explore how social innovation and entrepreneurship can create positive impact upon social determinants of health, in particular. The curriculum will also address best practices and methods in social entrepreneurship, emphasizing the importance of bidirectional relationship with beneficiaries, and of collaborative and iterative processes of co-design of solutions and innovations with the people they are intended to benefit.

Award funds will support faculty leads as they apply these same best practices in designing and developing the study abroad experience itself. While faculty Co-Leads Akhtar Badshah and Alissa Bilfield are each already connected to one of the foundational partners for this study abroad program, a pre-program visit will allow faculty Co-Lead Alissa Bilfield to strengthen connections and ensure a cohesive experience for students by connecting with staff, current students, alumni of both programs, and even local businesses. This is an especially critical step as this collaboration constitutes (to the best of our knowledge – and that of our contacts in India) new institutional partnerships for UW. Bilfield will also spend time consulting with partners on curriculum to collaboratively co-design the best and most impactful experiences and activities for students – thereby modeling the very bidirectional and non-extractive relationships which this course will teach.

Avery Shinneman
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Bothell
We propose establishing a four-week exploration seminar that begins with one week in Seattle discussing the management of freshwater lakes with local county, state and tribal management agencies through case studies that highlight key issues of concern in small lakes in the Puget Sound region.

We will then spend three weeks in Aotearoa/New Zealand to look at comparative management structures, with a particular attention on the ‘ braided river’ metaphor used to describe the integration or sharing of approaches from indigenous Mori and western knowledge.

Small lakes in Aotearoa/NZ have some geographical similarity to the Puget Sound region, with small alpine watersheds, moving through rural landscapes to more urban coastal regions. The lakes therefore face some of the same pressures from climate change, agricultural use, and urban growth. However, the geology and cultural context in New Zealand make their management for sustainable use different. Students interested in any kind of conservation and environmental management will
have the opportunity to consider how different approaches to knowledge production and decision-making influence management outcomes, whether specific to lakes or not.

The development funding will be used to attend conferences and make site visits to specific locations and establish relationships with researchers and lake management professionals working on lakes with similar contexts to the local Puget Sound case lakes. Proposed budget for project development includes conference travel to the two major lakes regions, one on the North island and one on the South Island, as well as smaller meetings with potential partners at field sites.

Trent Hill
iSchool
The course I will propose will focus on innovation initiatives and innovative practices in the GLAM sector–galleries, libraries, archives, and and museums–as well as other cultural heritage institutions in Portugal, and would be based for two weeks in Lisboa and two in Porto, potentially spending a few days in Coimbra as well. One of the focuses of the course will be on public value: the way that cultural-heritage institutions in the public sector demonstrate their contribution to public life and legitimate the resources devoted to them. Another focus will be on how the Portuguese cultural
heritage sector is addressing decolonization and immigration. Portugal is unusual among other colonial powers in the degree to which it has begun addressing the destructive practices and legacies of its colonial project, which involved settler colonialism in Brazil, Africa, and Asia, as well as the trade in enslaved Africans.

Portugal is also rather unique in its embrace of what the artist and activist Beatriz Dias calls “Luso-tropicalism”: the myth that “the Portuguese are a people with a natural propensity for miscegenation, a capacity for dialogue and mixing with indigenous populations from occupied African countries” The course will also look at street art and street performance as it relates to the GLAM sector. Lastly, readings and guest lectures will explore the role that the GLAM sector has played in helping Portugal to develop and sustain democracy since the Carnation Revolution and the
fall of the Estado Nova regime in 1974.

I will use award funds to establish connections with library science and museum curation programs in Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto, and Braga (which is near Porto), as well as meeting with the Study in Portugal Network at their main office in Lisbon. It will also give me the chance to meet with library, archive, gallery, and museum directors in and around Lisbon and Porto to set up guest lectures and site visits. Lastly, it will allow me to visit and negotiate with hotels in Lisbon and Porto to identify home bases for the program.

Grant Blume
Evans School
This week-long intensive field-based graduate elective course will take place annually during spring break in Montgomery, Birmingham, and rural Alabama (US). Comprising an instructional team of three early-career experienced educators and a cohort of master of public administration (MPA) students, the course aspires to achieve two learning outcomes:

Learning Outcome #1: Cultivate students’ critical consciousness of how who they are shapes how they make sense of racialized public policy and the racialized reality of life in the United States.

Learning Outcome #2: Equip students with a toolkit to identify and analyze racialized public policy, its outcomes, and its dismantling.

With a focus on Alabama and Washington State, this course takes a comparative approach to explore the ubiquity of institutional racism in the United States and how institutional racism manifests through public policy in a variety of ways based on history, politics, and local context. This field course centers around graduate students learning together in Alabama for spring break week and then returning to Washington to apply what they have learned to a local context. The current course curriculum is structured primarily with a public health focus, based on the expertise of the instructional team, but has a flexible design which allows the course to pivot toward other areas of public policy in its future iterations (e.g. education, criminal justice).

Marion Ferguson
Jackson School of International Studies
“International Indigenous Paths: Building Community Across the Canada-U.S. Border” is a new initiative from the Canadian Studies Center at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, in partnership with the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) and the Native UW Scholars (NUW) program. Funded by the U.S. Department of State IDEAS grant, this project is intended to develop pathways and programming that allows advisors, faculty, and host schools to create and encourage and supportive environments for Indigenous UW students. We aim to create a pathway for students to increase their participation in study abroad by building a familiar, supportive, and welcoming community at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Through collaborations with key units at both universities and our demonstrated commitment to Indigenous students, we will equip a cohort of undergraduates with the tools to successfully navigate the study abroad experience and pave the way for future students to do the same. Our activities are designed to lower the barriers that Indigenous students face along the way to study abroad participation. In early November, we held a workshop to assist students with the passport application process. The IDEAS funding covers many of these activities, including lines for student guides at UBC and an hourly UW student consultant. It does not, however, allow for any direct student travel costs like passport application fees. To make sure that all NUW Scholars are able to participate in the program, regardless of cost, and to encourage their future participation in study abroad, we are seeking funding to cover passport application ($130) and acceptance fees ($30) for up to 15 students, totaling $2,400.

José Alaniz
Slavic Languages & Literatures
The proposed study away course explores how the border wall has affected the culture and economics of the Valley since the 1990s, but especially since the Trump administration, when such construction accelerated as part of a larger crackdown on immigrants. As I envision it, the course would bring UW students to the Rio Grande Valley, hold class sessions at the UTRGV campus, and take the students to various sites impacted by border wall construction, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the National Butterfly Center, and the La Lomita Mission.

Class material would include writings by local authors on border life (such as Oscar Casares and Gloria Anzaldúa) and films (such as the 1976 Les Blank documentary Chulas Fronteras and the 2019 Ben Masters documentary The Border and the Wall).

The program would take place at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, TX, with which I would contract for student housing, dining facilities and classroom space. I was born and raised in Edinburg, know the area, and have lectured at UTRGV. My local partner/co-director would ideally be a member of the UTRGV faculty and staff. I have discussed this possibility with a number of faculty. I am also in contact with the UTRGV Office of Global Engagement.

The course would likely be offered through GLITS or CHID.

Lauren Berliner and Camille Walsh
School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Bothell
Our course will draw on current events and popular culture in the UK and Ireland to examine how Empire is reinforced and mediated through various texts and fields, including public culture and public space, human rights law, geography, film, literature, politics and tourism. For example, students will be encouraged to explore connections between a popular culture text such as the fictional Harry Potter series and the workings of Empire they are encountering on the ground. We intend this structure to be nimble enough to accommodate trending cultural artifacts and world events in a given year, with special attention to the ways social media challenges and reinforces notions of power and control (for example the death of Queen Elizabeth II or mobilizations
around Brexit). Students will engage in independent research projects that will draw on their experiences and observations.

Traveling between Ireland and the UK will give students the opportunity to experience the cultural and legal power at the center of centuries of colonial power as well as the land that served as the practice ground for imperial subjugation practices that ultimately spread across the world. Our objective is to help students to make connections between the structures of colonial power and its effects, and the way in which that power is represented both domestically and abroad. We hope that students will leave our program as more critically-informed knowledge producers with regard to how imperial power circulates and bears down on those at the margins.

We hope to explore the best ultimate design for the study abroad on the scouting trip, but we are considering an initial experience for students of several days or longer in either Dublin or London, then travel to the other city, followed by the remainder of the trip in a more affordable location that will provide nuance and insight into the complexities of immigration and colonialism either within Ireland, or within the UK in Scotland or Yorkshire.

Samuel Jaffee
Spanish & Portuguese Studies
I plan to travel to Buenos Aires to study the viability of a new UW Study Abroad program where students can study migration, community health and identities, and social justice initiatives through a practical curriculum of fieldwork and activities based in journalism, the arts, literature, and history.

The envisioned program site is one of two fully-accredited host institutions: either the elite, private University of San Andrés (UdeSA), with which UW has a current memorandum of understanding, or the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina’s leading humanities and arts-focused university. Both are located in suburban Buenos Aires and accessible by frequent train service. While on site visits to the two universities (at least one week at each) I will discuss a UW partnership with faculty and with international programs staff, attend study abroad class sessions and local classes, and write a budget for the academic program. The rest of the time in Buenos Aires, I will visit cultural centers and meet local writers, artists, teachers, academic tour guides and fixers, homestay coordinators, and homestay families to assess potential partnerships, services, and costs. I will assess a potential future global partnership between UdeSA or UNSAM and UW, which could take the form of future bi-directional exchange programs, technological links (“Teletandem”) between classes for the purpose of language exchange, or recruitment of new graduate students and TAs in Spanish at UW.

Colleen “Cricket” Keating
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
This proposed spring break study abroach course will explore the innovative ways that
Iceland has met some of the political, economic, cultural and environmental challenges that face the contemporary world. In particular, the course will introduce students to Icelandic innovations in gender politics, constitutional politics, cultural politics, and environmental politics. For several years, Iceland has been rated as the most equitable place for women by the Global Gender Gap Report, which many attribute to its innovative feminist public policy and activism. In the wake of the global
economic crash of 2008 Iceland became the first country to use social media to compose a crowd-sourced constitution. Due to several unique geologic features, Iceland is also home to some of the most cutting-edge environmental innovations in the world including innovative geothermal energy production. This course will explore these innovations, examining their development and consolidation; the relationship between movements for feminist, constitutional, cultural, and environmental change; and future visions for these movements in Iceland.

This course will consist of a one week trip to Iceland that combines formal lectures by local scholars with visits to various sites that illustrate Iceland’s innovations in the fields of gender equality, the environment, and democracy. This course will be linked to a regularly offered Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies course: GWSS 230, Feminism and Democracy in Transnational Perspective.

Meichun Liu
School of Art + Art History + Design
We are living in an interconnected world where global phenomena can emerge from local activities through the process of globalization. The concept of “glocalization,” a portmanteau word blending “global” and “local,” aptly reflects the challenges, as well as opportunities, faced by designers who work in complex sociotechnical arenas. How should design professionals be educated to prepare for a role that can address the complex issues the world is facing? A practical approach is to pave the way for young designers to practice human-centered design methods and design thinking in diverse contexts.

This proposal outlines the objectives, activities, timeline, and budget of the preparation work prior to creating a program to support UW students to design and learn with local students at top universities in Asia. The objective is to lay the foundation for the development of a sustainable study abroad program in design. Initial contacts have been made with three universities: (1) Communication Design Hub, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, (2) Department of Industrial Design, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan, and (3) Information Hub, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Guangzhou, China. NUS and UW have established a university-wide exchange agreement. However, there have not been exchange students between the design schools. Thus, promoting student exchange riding on the existing agreement is a secondary objective.