Global Research Initiative (GRI)
The Office of the Provost supports Global Research Initiative (GRI) fellows for short- and long-term research during the academic semesters at the NYU Washington, DC center. Such fellows receive shared office spaces with iMacs providing Windows and Mac environments, printing access, and NYURoam wireless service. Fellows are invited to participate in the many public events and Zoom webinars at the center and are encouraged to present research as they see fit.
Additionally, NYU Washington, DC hosts the summer dissertation writing workshop.
GRI Fellows (Fall 2023)
Research Topics
Gabriel Quigley (he/him/his) , PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, Graduate School of Arts & Science
Gabriel Quigley’s dissertation, titled “For Instants: Modernism and the Event” examines “the event,” a concept that twentieth-century philosophers define as a revolutionary, miraculous, and inexplicable occurrence, one that bewilders thought, overturns the law, and makes the impossible possible. By combining literary and philosophical methodologies with archival research, “For Instants” shows how theories of the event are fundamentally entangled with comparative modernist paradigms of chance, contingency, and wonder. Each chapter of Quigley’s dissertation investigates a different paradigm in the work of a modernist writer—Virginia Woolf’s “moment,” James Joyce’s “epiphany,” Samuel Beckett’s “occasion,” Walter Benjamin’s “Jetztzeit” (now-time), and Maurice Blanchot’s “instant”—by tracing its inception, its significance, and its relationship to continental thought. “For Instants” intervenes in the field of twentieth-century philosophy by revealing how many of its key thinkers—Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Alain Badiou, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida—conceived “the event” in dialogue with modernist literature. “For Instants” also intervenes in traditional interpretations of modernism by showing how, rather than representing a disenchanted modernity, modernist writers drew on philosophy to develop new conceptions of time, causality, and experience that affirmed the radical possibility of the present. Lastly, “For Instants” deflates the monumentalism of the event by showing how modernist writers viewed life’s most minor, small-scale, and ahistorical occurrences—from watching leaves scatter across the lawn to shifting a tin of sardines from one hand to the other—as revolutionary, miraculous, baffling. The archives and academic milieu of Washington, D.C. will provide resources for Quigley’s research on these writers and their work. An example of this is his chapter on Beckett, which investigates Beckett’s inquiry into the aesthetic concept of “the occasion,” which he develops through a reading of artworks that are exclusively housed in D.C. archives. Additionally, the manuscript of Walter Benjamin’s most influential work–his “Theses on the Philosophy of History”–is housed in the Hannah Arendt collection at the National Library of Congress. Quigley also looks forward to being able to meet with faculty members at Georgetown University who are established scholars in his field and whose mentorship will be helpful for the completion of his dissertation.
Claire Sieffert (she/her/hers), PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Arts & Science
Accountability has become a morally charged buzzword, yet its meaning is often ambiguous. Claire Sieffert’s dissertation unpacks how accountability is operationalized in international development organizations, particularly examining the professional, moral, and social dynamics that shape what accountability means in practice. In the first paper of her dissertation, she focused on how professional trade-offs shape the way that international development evaluators standardize their criteria of what is “good.” Her second and third papers turn towards a different approach to accountability that has proliferated across international development organizations since the 1990s: grievance redress and accountability mechanisms. Broadly speaking, these mechanisms receive grievances about harm caused by development activities. Based on interviews with professionals in the field, as well as document and digital analysis, Sieffer is examining what factors shape how these mechanisms deliver accountability. Sieffert looks forward to working out of Washington, D.C., as there are a plethora of resources that can assist in her research project. One includes the fact that the US federal government has played a pivotal role in setting up these accountability systems, such as using their influence to pressure organizations to adopt grievance redress and accountability mechanisms (Park 2022). And another includes the fact that many academics and organizations related to Sieffert’s research are based in D.C., and as such she plans to make further connections and conduct interviews that will widen her research of accountability processes in international development.
Xue Wang (she/her/hers), PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Graduate School of Arts & Science
The morphology of the lumbar spine is closely associated with the difference in posture and locomotion among primates. For instance, apes and humans perform an upright posture, distinct from the horizontal posture in most monkeys. Humans and their ancestors walk on two legs, a distinguishing feature from apes and other primates. Most existing work focuses on the adult individuals, with limited information on the development of the lower back. How does the growth pattern of the lumbar spine affect the development of posture and locomotion in the early developmental stage of each species? What are the similarities and differences of grown patterns in the lumbar spine among living apes and humans, and what type of growth pattern characterized fossil ancestors? Those questions can be addressed by collecting data on the lumbar spine of living apes and humans in different ages. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses a large collection of living apes in relevant developmental age to Xue Wang’s research, and the collected data will be included in her dissertation project.
Sofie A. Williams (she/her/hers), PhD Candidate, Department of History, Graduate School of Arts & Science
While Brazil's rapid industrial growth under military rule between 1964 and 1985 produced more profit and development than ever before; it also left the working-class with permanent injuries and illnesses. Between 1976 and 1979, Brazil won the dubious honor of being declared the world leader in disabling workplace accidents by the International Labor Organization. For decades to come, all those compelled to labor and care for their bodies in Brazil felt the ripple effects of this crisis. Meanwhile, both employers and unions struggled to see Brazilians who acquired disabilities outside factories as productive citizens. Scholars have often reproduced this divide between injured workers and disabled people. Sofie A. Williams’ dissertation critically analyzes how labor unionists and disabled Brazilians struggled for safe, dignified work and robust healthcare in Greater São Paulo, from 1978, when workers’ health and disability movements began gaining momentum, through the end of Workers’ Party founder Lula da Silva’s second term as president in 2011. Though they often opposed each other, debilitated workers and disability activists together won a slate of novel social and economic rights that uniquely benefitted both groups. The labor unionists in Williams’ dissertation who asserted themselves as experts on workers’ health and occupational safety took courses from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and attended seminars and received support from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) in D.C and New York. The deployment of the knowledge they gained from these courses is key to showing how Williams’ actors engaged in and influenced international debate concerning changing labor norms around bodies. In addition, both labor unions and the disability rights movements have lost part of their archives due to the political and economic pressures of the last decade in Brazil. U.S. government collections maintained to stay informed on these movements will help make up for these archival losses.