Alejandra Osejo Varona, Rice Anthropology Graduate Student, has been awarded an Expanding Horizons Fellowship. Made possible by Walter Loewenstern, this fellowship will fund travel awards for research-related travel that will benefit the local communities connected to that research, while expanding the students' knowledge and experience.
Alejandra's award will be used to fund a two-week trip to Colombia. The academic objective of the trip is to strengthen the design of her doctoral thesis project that aims to understand the role of science in public policies related to the conservation of biodiversity in Colombia, which have focused mainly on the prohibition of productive activities such as agriculture and livestock. In these visits, she will support the processes of the territorial ordering of these communities through the development of training in environmental governance, mechanisms for the transformation of socio-environmental conflicts, interdisciplinary methodologies for the diagnosis and territorial ordering and environmental public policies.