Dr. Kim de Mutsert’s Graduate student, Sara Marriott, has been awarded a Boren fellowship, which will allow her to include fieldwork in the Philippines as part of her dissertation research.
From Sara:
“Boren Awards are made up of three parts, Language, Culture and Service. Through this fellowship, I will have the opportunity to travel to the Philippines for six months to study Tagalog and conduct research. My Ph.D. research is on social-ecological systems in small-scale fishery management in the Philippines, in which part of my research will be interviewing fishers and community members to better understand how community-based management practices work. Small-scale fisheries make up a large portion of unreported or under-regulated fishing and researching ways to make this sector more sustainable is important for both ecosystems and livelihoods of fishers. Finally, upon graduation, Boren Fellows are required to spend a year of service in the federal government, bringing their experiences and knowledge gained from the fellowship into US policy. This fellowship excites me because I hold stakeholder engagement as a core tenant. It is easy to just look at the numbers of fish biomass to determine impact, but in doing that I believe that you miss a large portion of the story of how and why different management/governance structures are or are not working. Having the opportunity to live in my study area working directly with fishers for six months is a dream come true in addition to enhancing my research outcomes.”
Congratulations Sara, we can’t wait to see where this takes you!