Postcards from the Field: Part 1

Graduate students go all over the world during their summers, completing research, taking language classes, and immersing themselves in other cultures. The Edge Effects Editorial Board asked CHE graduate students to send us “postcards” from the field to share their summer experiences and adventures. This is the first of two posts this week in which we are featuring postcards from a handful of CHE graduate affiliates. In this post, we hear from Catalina Munteanu, Ruth Trumble, and Bo Wang.

Click on each postcard to enlarge.

Catalina Munteanu

This summer, Catalina was exploring the Danube Delta, the largest biosphere reserve in Europe and one of the most culturally and biologically diverse places on the planet. She was there on an exploratory trip scoping out potential future research about bird diversity in Romania. Her full biography can be found below.

Ruth Trumble

This summer, Ruth traveled to Serbia for an intensive language course at the Serbian Language and Culture Workshop, funded by the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS) program, and to conduct pre-dissertation research on the effects of the May 2014 floods in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her full biography can be found below. To learn more about the flood in Obrenovac, The Guardian’s “Floods in the Balkans in Pictures” is a good place to begin. Live footage of the flood can be seen here.

Bo Wang

This summer, Bo was at Shangrila, Diqing Tibetan Prefecture, Yunnan, Southwest China, for doctoral dissertation fieldwork funded by National Science Foundation and the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies at UW-Madison. His full biography can be found below.  

Featured image: “postage stamps.”  CC0 Public Domain

Catalina Munteanu is a graduate student in the Forest & Wildlife Ecology Department, studying historic and contemporary forest and agricultural change in Eastern Europe. Originally from Romania, Catalina has studied and worked in Austria, Scotland, and the US, always keeping her connection to her homeland through her work. She is fascinated by the ecology and landscapes of Eastern Europe and is planning to continue her work in the region after graduating from UW-Madison next year. Contact.

Ruth Trumble is a Ph.D. student in the Geography Department at UW-Madison working with Dr. Robert Kaiser. Her research explores the relationship between environmental disasters and peacebuilding initiatives in post-conflict areas. Currently, her work focuses on the spring 2014 floods in southeastern Europe. She received her B.A. in Geography from Hunter College-CUNY and M.S. in Geography from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Contact. 

Bo Wang is doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology at UW-Madison. He just completed 12 months of fieldwork in Diqing Tibetan Prefecture of Yunnan, Southwest China. His research interests include environment, religion, sacredness, dirt and pollution, soundscapes, and everyday life in Tibet and China. He hopes to complete and defend his dissertation by the end of 2016. Contact.