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Steinhaus/Zisson Pembroke Center Research Grants for Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Funding Opportunities

The Beatrice Bloomingdale Steinhaus ’33, P’60, P’65, GP’87, GP’91/Gertrude Rosenhirsch Zisson’30, P’61, P’63, GP’91 grants support undergraduate and graduate student research at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Student research may be on any topic related to the work of the Pembroke Center, with preference given to research on women's education, health, community activism, philanthropy, and economic status, and women's rights and well-being in the United States and in developing countries around the world.

For application due date, see here. 

Undergraduate students are invited to apply for grants up to $1,000. Graduate students may apply for grants up to a maximum of $2,000. Application materials include:

  • a three- to five-page description of your research project
  • a letter of support from faculty advisor
  • amount requested and plan for allocated grant funds

The Steinhaus/Zisson Fund was provided by Nancy Steinhaus Zisson ’65, P’91 and William Zisson ’63, P’91 in memory of their mothers, Beatrice Bloomingdale Steinhaus ’33, P’60, P’65, GP’87, GP’91 and Gertrude Rosenhirsch Zisson ’30, P’61, P’63, GP’91, and the life changing education that they received at Pembroke College in Brown University. It was established in recognition of their family members who are alumnae and alumni of Brown University, including Margaret Steinhaus Sheppe ’60, P’87, Harry R. Zisson ’61, William Zisson ’63, P’91, Nancy Steinhaus Zisson ’65, P’91, Laura Sheppe Miller ’87, Michael B. Miller ’87, Alex Zisson ’91, and Emma Miller ’16. These two women inspired a love of learning in their children and grandchildren, and a strong belief that education and self-improvement are important aspects of personal growth that do not stop with the end of formal schooling. They believed profoundly in women's rights and affordable education as a means to achieving these goals.

2024-25 Recipients

  • Shravya Sompalli ’25, Undergraduate student, Ethnic Studies and Computer Science
    “Opening the Curtains: Reclaiming Technology-Enabled Narratives on Massage and Sex Work in Queens, New York”
  • Luiz Paulo Ferraz, Graduate student, History
    “‘The Original Earth Defenders:’ Gender, Environment, and the Rise of Brazil's Indigenous Women Leaders”
  • Kiana Knight, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Translating Racial Uplift: Black Women, Language, and International Politics, 1918-1965”
  • Mohadeseh Salari Sardari, Graduate student, History of Art and Architecture
    “Craving Her Space: Negotiating Architectural Boundaries in the Lives of Taj Alsaltane and Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari”

Past Recipients

  • Betsy S. Archelus, Graduate student, History
    “Black Feminism in the Korean Fatherland: complicating race and gender in Korea, 1945-1987”
  • Caroline Cunfer, Graduate student, American Studies
    “Unthinking Sex: Cultural Sites of Compulsory Sexuality and the Politics of Desire”
  • Ashley Everson, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Voices of the Valley: Black Women, Radical Politics, and Internationalism in the Tennessee Valley, 1931-1950”
  • Eric Jones, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Clairton: An Intergenerational Pattern of Disease and Death”
  • Malcolm Shanks ’23.5, Undergraduate student, Gender and Sexuality Studies
    “Gender & Political Ideology in West Central Africa, 1500-1700”
  • Aisha Tipnis ‘23, Undergraduate student, Science, Technology, and Society
    “Pelvic Spectators: Entanglements of the Speculum in the Gynecological Pelvic Exam”
  • Mohadeseh Salari Sardari, Graduate student, History of Art and Architecture
    “The Mislabeling and Misrepresentation of Miniature Paintings in Brown University’s Minassian Collection”
  • Alexandria Miller, Graduate student, Africana Studies 
    “Make Way for the Rebel Empress: Reggae Women and Gender Politics in Jamaica, 1960-2020”
  • Ailish Burns, Graduate student, Sociology
    “The Social Landscape of Severe Maternal Morbidity: A Regional Decomposition”
  • Stephanie Y. Wong, Graduate student, History
    “Material Gender in the Early Modern Spanish Pacific”
  • Radhika Moral, Graduate student, Anthropology
    “Silk Frontiers: Commodity Chains, Women’s Work, and the Politics of Belonging in Northeast India”
  • Ieva Zumbyte, Graduate student, Sociology
    “Neighborhood Class Distinctions: How Caregivers Respond to Parental Expectations in Delivering Childcare Services in Urban India”
  • Jenny Dolan, Graduate student, American Studies
    “Constructing Willpower: The Origins of the Marshmallow Experiment”
  • Deborah Frempong, Graduate student, Anthropology
    “Gendered Mobilities: Faith, Belonging and Spatial Geographies of Returnee Women in Accra”
  • Felicia Denaud, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “At the Vanishing Point of the Word: Blackness and the Unnameable War”
  • Warren Harding, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Bearing Witness, Holding Space: Black Caribbean Migrant Women and the Literacies of Belonging”
  • Nell Lake, Graduate student, American Studies
    “Mother. Nurse. Housewife. Maid.: The Enduring Moral Politics of ‘Women’s Work’ in America”
  • Kristen Maye, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Black Studies Toward a Poetics of Black Critique”
  • Esha Sraboni, Graduate student, Sociology
    “Making Meaning of Gendered Violence and the Law: Global Discourses and Local Realities in Bangladesh”
  • Ieva Zumbyte, Graduate student, Sociology
    “Tracing the Quality of Public Childcare Services in Urban Settlements”
  • Rehan Jamil, Graduate student, Political Science
    “Social Policy and Changing Citizenship Boundaries in Pakistan”
  • Kristen McNeill, Graduate student, Sociology
    “Gendered Evaluations, Gendered Effects: A Bank-to-Household Approach to Microfinance and Women’s Economic Empowerment”
  • Melanie White, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Afro-Nicaraguan Women’s Art and Visions of Autonomy on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua”
  • Daniel McDonald, Graduate student, History
    “Mothers on the March: Grassroots Women’s Resistance in Military Brazil”
  • Katsí Rodríguez Velázquez, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Claiming the Anjelamaría Davilá: Black Women in the Decolonization of Puerto Rico”
  • Zoe Gilbard ’18, Undergraduate student, History and Public Health
    “Eugenics in Rhode Island’s Progressive Era Psychiatric Institutions: The Treatment of Women and Immigrants”
  • Aja Grande ’18, Undergraduate student, Science, Technology & Society
    “The Pursuit of Pono in Hawai’i Education Politics”
  • Lydia Kelow Bennett, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Conjuring Freedom: A Black Feminist Meditation for Neoliberal Times”
  • Girija Borker, Graduate student, Economics
    “Safety First: Perceived Travel Risk and College Choice of Women”
  • Javier Fernanez Galeano, Graduate student, History
    “The Argentinean Lesbian Feminist Movement”
  • Camille L. Garnsey ’17, Undergraduate student, Latin American Studies, Public Health
    “The history of reproductive rights in Cuba”
  • Arlen Austin and Beth Capper, Graduate students, Modern Culture and Media
    “Wages Due! A Digital Humanities Archive of the Wages for Housework Movement”
  • Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Graduate student, Departments of History and Modern Culture and Media
    “Representing Rape: A Visual History of Feminist Protest in India”
  • Anne Gray Fischer, Graduate student, Department of History
    “Arrestable Behavior: Vulnerable Women, State Power, and the Rise of the Carceral State, 1932-1982”
  • Kwang R. Choi ’17, Undergraduate student, Visual Art
    “Submerging and Resurfacing: Multimedia Investigation of the ‘Last Mermaids’ of Jeju”
  • Noah Fields ’17, Undergraduate student, Classics
    “as I watch you, in fleeting glances, no talk is left inside me”
  • Wanda Henry, Graduate student, History
    “Searching the Dead and Burying the Bodies: Searchers of the Dead, Sextonesses, and Women Undertakers in England from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries”
  • Rijuta Mehta, Graduate student, Modern Culture and Media
    “The Repatriation Portrait: Women at the End of Empire, 1947-1953”
  • Nicosia Shakes, Graduate student, Africana Studies
    “Women’s Theatre and Feminist Activism in Jamaica and South Africa: A Study of Sistren Theatre Collective and The Mothertongue Project”
  • Esme Ricciardi ’15, Undergraduate student, International Relations
    “Islamic Immigrations, Sex Trafficking, and the Media: The Impact of Trafficking and Terrorism Discourses on Migration Policy in the EU”
  • Meghan Kallman, Graduate student, Sociology
    “Bureaucratized morality, institutional durability: organizationally mediated idealism and international relationships in the Peace Corps”
  • Chelsea Cormier McSwiggin, Graduate student, Anthropology
    “An Anthropological Study of the Experience of HIV, Kinship, and Community in Miami's Haitian Diaspora”
  • Caroline Park and Asha Tamirisa, Graduate students, Music
    “opensignal: A Dynamic Reconfiguring of Women in Computer Music”
  • Jesse McGleughlin ’14, Undergraduate student, Africana Studies
    “From Fannie Lou Hamer to Audre Lorde: Reading the National Freedom Democratic Party through Performance and Intervention”
  • Francesca Inglese, Graduate student, Music
    “Coloured Coons and Klopse Beats: Embodying Contested Subjectivities in Cape Town, South Africa”
  • Bryan Knapp, Graduate student, History
    “From Women’s Health to World Health: The Politics of Infant Formula, World Hunger, and Corporate Accountability, 1968-1981”
  • Navarra Buxton ’13, Undergraduate student, Anthropology
    “OpenDoors Case Study: The Effects of Pre and Post Release Employment Readiness Programs in the U.S. on Reducing Recidivism Rates Among Women”