CAPI Student Fellowships

2022 CAPI Student Research Fellowship recipient Kaitlyn Zerr checking on a time lapse camera at one of her data collection sites
2022 CAPI Student Research Fellowship recipient Kaitlyn Zerr checking on a time lapse camera at one of the Manta Trust organization's data collection sites off the Maldives (photo courtesy Kaitlyn Zerr).

 


Two CAPI Student Fellowships valued at $2,500 each are available on an annual basis to support student research and study in the Asia-Pacific region:

  • one Student Research Fellowship to encourage excellence in research on the Asia-Pacific region, and
  • one Student Language Fellowship to support the study of languages of the Asia-Pacific region

Closing date:  31 March at 4pm Pacific Time each year

Contact: CAPI at 250-721-7020 or  for more information.

Eligibility

To be eligible applicants must:

  • be enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program at UVic during the year of application;
  • be returning to UVic for further study after going abroad;
  • have a B+ average over the most recent 15 units completed.

The CAPI Student Research Fellowship is restricted to Master or Ph.D. level candidates. Applicants must have the written approval of their Supervisor.

The CAPI Student Language Fellowship is open to undergraduate students in their third year and above, as well as to graduate students. Applicants must have a B+ average for the equivalent of two years of language training unless the language to be studied is not taught at UVic.

Terms

1. Individuals who accept this Fellowship are responsible for arranging their own: visas/permits as required; language program/field work; health insurance coverage; and accommodation. CAPI accepts no responsibility other than disbursal of the award.

2. Funds are awarded as a reimbursement for travel costs and, in the case of the Language Fellowship, tuition fees. Upon returning to UVic, the student must provide airline receipts, boarding passes, local transport receipts etc. to CAPI; submit a two-page report or article for the CAPI newsletter; and, if requested by CAPI, present a CAPI lunch time seminar.

3. Language training applications should include a letter of acceptance from a Language Program (may be forthcoming at time of application, with acceptance letter required before release of funds).

4. Fellowships are awarded solely at the discretion of the Selection Committee, whose decision is final.

5. The Fellowships should be used within one year of the year of the date they are awarded.

Preparing and submitting your application

A complete application should include:

  • A completed Application Form
  • A copy of your resume
  • An up-to-date copy of your transcript (unofficial versions are fine for the application stage)
  • For the CAPI Student Research Fellowship, a two-page description of your proposed research project and activities, AND a letter of support from your Faculty Supervisor
  • For the CAPI Student Language Fellowship, a one-page description of your proposed program of language study is required, including reasons for your selection of the proposed program.

Applications must be submitted electronically to: 

Please note: Late or incomplete applications will not be accepted.


2023 Student fellowship recipients

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Arvind Kumar


UVic department of study: 
PhD candidate, UVic Faculty of Law

Project title: Indigeneity, Self-Governance, and Autonomy: Re-imagining Governance in Adivasi Regions in the context of Adivasis participation in the Naxal Movement

Abstract

My research seeks to re-imagine governance in the Adivasi regions of India in the context of Adivasis participation in the Naxal Movement. The five-decade old movement seeks to overthrow the Indian state through a peasant revolution and has found a strong base in regions home to Adivasis, the de-facto Indigenous peoples of India.

 
This research is based on the premise that the post-colonial Indian state has systematically weakened Adivasis autonomy over their society and territory using the colonial practice of transforming and subjugating indigenous societies, economies, and polities through the imposition of non-indigenous or state governance structures. While extending state-sponsored decentralized governance frameworks to Adivasi regions may seem a logical step towards granting self-governance and autonomy to Adivasis, Adivasis longstanding demand for self-governance and autonomy indicates that everything is not right with the present governance framework. If anything, the continuous ongoing process of alienation from traditional land, forced displacement and migration, and erosion of culture indicates that the state-sponsored governance framework has failed to grant self-governance and autonomy to Adivasis. In addition, the courts have been inconsistent in redressing Adivasis grievances when Adivasis approach the courts for justice. Against this context, I argue the underlying reasons for Adivasis participation in the Naxal movement are intrinsically linked with the historical imposition of non-Adivasi governance systems, erosion of traditional self-governance systems (TGSs), and consequent loss of autonomy. Subsequently, I seek to establish the importance of Adivasis TGSs, including laws and justice systems, in extending self-governance and autonomy to Adivasis.
Activities

The CAPI Research Fellowship will help fund my fieldwork and my travels for a paper presentation at an international conference. 

To comprehend the objectives and answers to the questions raised in this project, it is necessary to engage and document Adivasi perspective and narratives on self-governance and autonomy. Therefore, this research is designed as a multi-method ethnography, which includes qualitative research tools such as participant observation, open-structured conversational interviews, recording stories and oral histories, and document analysis. The ethnographic fieldwork will be conducted in the Munda community villages of Khunti district of state of Jharkhand.

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Nhan 'Mac' Nguyen


UVic department of study: 
PhD Candidate, UVic Gustavson School of Business

Project title: 
Love of country: Organization’s patriotism and its strategic use to legitimize innovation

Abstract

Organizational-level patriotism—an organization's love or devotion to its country—is pervasive. Organization’s patriotism can take many forms, such as organizational goals or commitment associated with a country’s culture, goals, and interests. Tata Group—an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai, for example, was infused with the vision of “[propelling] India into the ranks of industrialised nations” when it was founded in 1868 [1]. Similarly, when starting up Sony Corporation—a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan—in 1946, the founder Akio Morita also aligns his corporate commitment “to develop the technologies that would help rebuild Japan's economy” [2]. From the business and management perspective, organizational-level patriotism has also been used strategically to achieve organizational goals. The Canadian multinational coffeehouse Tim Hortons, for example, has promoted its business by associating itself with the Canadian culture and identity as a patriotic act since 1996 [3, 4]. Recently, Vingroup—the Vietnamese largest conglomerate—has also claimed its acts of patriotism regarding its efforts to boost Vietnam’s industrialization, localize the manufacturing base, and develop spearhead industries of the country [5]. Such claims seek to strategically maneuver the patriotism cause as a symbolic resource to legitimize Vingroup’s innovations (e.g., electric cars, university, and school systems). Surprisingly, in management and organizational studies, organizational-level patriotism has been understudied. Patriotism has been extensively studied in various social science disciplines, including political science, social psychology, economics, and public administration. Those studies have focused primarily on individual-level patriotism—an individual's love or extreme commitment to the nation. Generally, such studies explain how and why individual-level patriotism enables and constrains certain activities or outcomes. However, we know little about the strategic role of patriotism in different aspects of business and management. Given patriotism as a crucial, but understudied, avenue, my research aims to explore this topic. Getting inspired by the empirical observations of Vingroup’s strategy concerning patriotism and innovations, I ask: why and how do entrepreneurial firms mobilize patriotism as a social-symbolic resource to legitimize innovation?

Activities

This fellowship will fund my field trip to collect primary data in different cities in Vietnam (i.e., Hanoi, Da Nang, Hai Phong, and Ho Chi Minh) from May to September 2023. I have completed gathering secondary data (i.e., archival records) using UVic’s library databases and other online sources. My next step is to collect primary data, including i) interviews with Vingroup’s informants (i.e., founder, managers, and leaders), ii) focus-group interviews with Vingroup’s stakeholders (i.e., local governments, customers/ clients in Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh cities), and iii) on-site observations at Vingroup’s headquarters (in Hanoi) and its manufacturing factory (in Hai Phong city). These three main activities aim to capture the informants’ narratives, interpretations, and justification toward articulating the process behind Vingroup’s employing patriotism throughout its legitimation of innovation. 

Year Name Program of study Project
2022 Xue Ma PhD student,  Department of Anthropology People’s Currency in Digits: State, Market and Society in China’s Digital Money Transformations
2022 Kaitlyn Zerr MSc Candidate,  Department of Biology Eyes on the Reef: Using remote cameras to assess the impact of tourism on reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi) behaviour at cleaning stations in the Maldives
2021 Lynn Ng PhD student, Department of Political Science The occupational experiences of migrant workers in the eldercare sector in Singapore and Taiwan
2020 Kevin Bruce MSc student, UVic Department of Biology The fluid backbone of coral reefs: changes in reef structure through a climate-change induced mass coral mortality event
2019 Ratana Ly PhD student, UVic Faculty of Law A Legal Pluralist Approach to Realizing the Occupational Safety and Health of Construction Workers in Cambodia: Regulating Multinational Construction Corporations
2018 Kristina Tietjen MSc student, UVic Department of Biology Coral reef recovery rates along a gradient of local disturbance following unprecedented heat stress
2018 Can Zhao PhD student, UVic Department of Political Science Uber Revolution: state governance of capital and labor in China, France, and the United States of America
2017 Alexandra Lloyd MA student, UVic Department of Anthropology “How do transnational Indonesian women studying abroad in Australia navigate sexuality in shifting sociopolitical contexts? How are women’s everyday lived experiences impacted by hegemonic cultural expectations in a transnational context?” | working paper: "It's about the fear of judgment": Transnational Indonesian women and the surveillance of sexuality
2017 Dennis Gupa PhD student, UVic Department of Theatre “Sea Rituals, Climate Change and Applied Theatre: Indigenous Elders Perspectives on Traditional and Sustainalbe Ecology”
2016 Charlene Mohammed MA Student, UVic Department of Anthropology “To share or not to share: Food security and social inequality among migrant domestic workers in Singapore”
2015 Alessio Kockel PhD candidate, UVic Department of Geography “Evaluating the trade-offs of systemic conservation planning approaches for designing networks of marine protected ares in the Philippines”
2014 Debra McKenzie PhD candidate, UVic Faculty of Law “Hybrid Law in the Kingdom of Tonga: Maintaining the dynamism of tradition”
2014 Harrison Ellis BA student, UVic Department of Political Science “Work Experience and Community Involvement”
2014 Evelyne Laurin MA Student, UVic Department of Geography “Empowerment of vulnerability? Investigating the social impacts of microfinance programs on Cambodian women”
2014 Danielle Claar PhD candidate, UVic Department of Biology "Elucidating mechanisms of coral reef resilience to El Niño on the world’s largest atoll”
2013 Catherine Lawrence MA student, UVic School of Public Administration (Dispute Resolution program) "The Nepal National Diplomacy Training Program Master’s Project"
2012 Caitlin Wake PhD student, UVic Social Dimension of Health program "Exploring the Social Determinants of Health Among Urban Refugees in Malaysia"
2012 Ruji Auethavornpipat MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies "The Teaching and Learning of Mandarin Chinese in Thailand"
2012 Jing Qian PhD candidate, UVic Faculty of Law "People vs. Peoples: A Socio-legal Study on Gap Problems within Administrative Litigation in China"
2011 Joel Legassie UVic Department of History
2011 David Fargo UVic Department of Anthropology
2010 Harpreet Jaswal MSc student, UVic Department of Geography "An integrated approach to disaster management"
2008 Sayuri Holman MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies "Men, matrimony and masculinities: Some implications of changing marriage patterns for Fijian men"
2007 Genevieve Gamache MA student, UVic Department of History in Art "Between nationalism and globalization: Wat Rong Khun and neo-traditional art in Thailand"
2006 Yuji Matson MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies “The Search for Identity’ in Modern Japanese Literature & Cineman: The Collaborations between the Writer Abe Kobo and Film-maker Teshigahara Hiroshi”
2005 Thane Bonar MA student, UVic Department of Political Science "Hanuman's Army: Hindutva and Tribal Conversion in the Dangs"
2004 Jane Wu MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies "In the Name of SARS: Regulated Mass Panic, Shanghai 2003"
2004 Micaela Campbell MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies "No Woman is an Island: Issues of Participation and Representation in the Literary Works of Ayu Utami"
2003 Jenny Munro MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies "Decolonizing the Moral High Ground: HIV/ AIDS and Youth in Papua"
2002 Kristin Lunn student, UVic Department of Geography “Assessing the Role of Thailand’s Marine Protected Areas in Local Fisheries Management”
2002 Michele-Lee Moore student, UVic Department of Geography “Introducing Microbial Culture to Shrimp Farming”
2001 Hussein Keshani student, UVic Department of History “The Bara Imambara of Lucknow (architectural history)”
2001 Eve Paterson student, UVic Department of History in Art “The Spiritual Resonance of Cows in the Art of Contemporary South Asian Women Artists”
2001 Catherine Sparks-Ngenge student, UVic Institute for Dispute Resolution “Indigenous Resistance to Land Resistance to Land Reform in Papua New Guinea: Evaluating the Impacts of the Movement and the Role of the Belief System”
2001 Sarah Turner student, UVic Department of Anthropology  “Japanese Macaque Behaviour”
Year Name Program of study Language training
2021 Roopa Kanal MA student, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Lessons in Nepali through the Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Centre for Buddhist Studies, at Kathmandu University, to support her research on contemporary Nepali art.
2019 Will Howling BCom student, UVic Gustavson School of Business Bahasa Indonesia language lessons as part of an international exchange at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia from August to December 2019
2015 Benjamin Lawrence PhD candidate, UVic Faculty of Law Khmer lessons at the Language Institute of Natural Khmer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to support fieldwork regarding the Cambodian constitution
2012 Connor Bildfell BCom student, UVic Peter B. Gustavson School of Business International student exchange at Peking University
2011 Chany Chea UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Indonesian at The Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies, Indonesia
2011 Alicia Lawrence UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Indonesian at Puri Bahasa, Indonesia
2010 Kathleen Gregson MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Indonesian in Bali, Indonesia
2008 Nicola Bancroft BA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Bahasa Indonesian at Yogyakarta, Indonesia
2007 Hilary Gorman MA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Indonesian at the University of Surabaya, Indonesia
2006 Chandler Vandergrift student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Thai at the Advance Alliance Academy Thai Language Center in Bangkok, Thailand
2005 Genevieve Gamache MA student, UVic Department of History in Art For the study of Thai at the Advance Alliance Academy Thai Language Center in Bangkok, Thailand
2003 Kimberlee Hart BA student, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies For the study of Japanese at Doshisha University, Kyoto
2002 Jordan K.S. Anderson student, UVic Faculty of Business For the study of Maylay at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang
2001 Tanya Lloyd student, UVic Faculty of Business For the study of Indonesian at Gadjah Mada University Indonesia