Two UW-Madison Geography graduate students have received 2014-15 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program awards by the U.S. Department of Education. Both recipients are conducting research in Thailand under Dr. Ian Baird.

Starting early next year, David Chambers will look at changing understandings of “good space” among some Hmong ethnic minority communities in northern Thailand. His project considers how shifts (at several scales, political-economic regimes, cultural milieux, legal negotiations, and environmental contexts) have influenced Hmong migration to new areas and created the contexts for Hmong identity formation and articulation in space.

Will Shattuck plans to conduct research on demonstrations held in southern Thailand in 2013 over falling rubber prices, events which preceded widespread political protests in Bangkok. His project explores questions of southern Thai regional-political identities and the ways that rubber (a form of agriculture whose presence in southern Thailand’s rural livelihoods stretches back over a century) enables their construction and mobilization.

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students to conduct research in other countries in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to twelve months.