After taking a history seminar with Prof. Daniel Rodriguez the fall of my junior year, I was inspired to explore the history of reproductive rights in Cuba during my semester abroad in Havana. The GLISP was the perfect avenue for this exploration, and the process of designing and completing the GLISP enriched my time in Havana and helped me develop a number of valuable research skills.
I enjoyed the self-directed research process so much that I decided to use the work I did for my GLISP as the foundation for my honors thesis and to devote a large chunk of my senior year to continued work on the topic. My GLISP/thesis research almost singlehandedly inspired my continued pursuit of community-engaged research work, and also really sparked my interest in reproductive health as a topic bound up in broader questions of how people and policy relate to science, culture, history and politics.
When I graduated from Brown in 2017 I went to work for Ibis Reproductive Health, where I contributed to research projects related to abortion and reproductive health in Latin America, the US, and Europe. In March, I will move to Buenos Aires as a Fulbright grantee to research the abortion legalization effort that is underway in Argentina. I believe my GLISP experience was the reason I became so passionate about this issue, was critical in helping me develop my Fulbright research proposal, and enabled me to develop the skills that I’m sure will be key to successfully completing my independent research work in this next phase my career.”