Postcards from the Field: Part 2

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 Danya Al-Saleh, W. Nathan Green, and Joanna Wilson.

Click on each postcard to enlarge.

Danya Al-Saleh

This summer, Danya was in Amman, Jordan, for pre-dissertation training in Arabic language at the Qasid Arabic Institute, funded by the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS) program.  It was there she drew connections between the decline of Arabic language study in some parts of the Middle East, the increase in Arabic enrollment in Jordan, and the Syrian refugee crisis. The UN’s guidelines on global education can be found here. Her full biography can be found below.

W. Nathan Green

This summer, Nathan traveled to southern Cambodia to conduct preliminary research in preparation for his future dissertation project. His full biography can be found below.

Joanna Wilson

This summer, Joanna was in Buena Vista, Georgia working on the conservation of the visionary artist site “Pasaquan”, funded by The Kohler Foundation. Her full biography can be found below.

Featured image: “Picture Postcards.”  CC0 Public Domain

Danya Al-Saleh is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the UW-Madison, working on globalized higher education and urbanization with an area focus on the Arabian Peninsula. Her dissertation research will focus on Education City in Doha, Qatar, a physical and administrative campus composed of six U.S. branch universities. Contact.

W. Nathan Green is in his second year as a doctoral student in the Department of Geography. His research interests include hydropower development, the history of antimalarial drug resistance, and agrarian change in Cambodia and Southeast Asia more broadly. For his dissertation, he plans to study how microfinance and new financial technologies (e.g. mobile banking) are changing rural land relations in southern Cambodia, where he lived and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer (2009-2011). Contact.

Joanna Wilson is a PhD student in the Art History Department at UW-Madison. Her research explores the confluence of landscape—along with its various cultural interpretations—and American identity. Contact.