Congratulations to RDI Faculty Seed Grant recipient team Shelley Staples (English), Christine Tardy (English) and Vignesh Subbian (College of Engineering). Through textual (corpus) analysis and individual interviews with students, their project examines the interrelated issues of writing development and disciplinary identity for second language students majoring in Engineering. (Image credit: Mwnuk, Wikimedia Commons)

RDI Accelerate for Success Grant recipients Greg Barron-Gafford (Geography and Biosphere 2), Kirk Dimond (CAPLA), and Andrea Gerlak (Geography) investigate novel approaches for maximizing food and renewable energy production while reducing water use. The team integrates research through experiential learning, partnerships with area schools, and local non-profits.

Sonia Shiri (MENAS) received an RDI Start for Success grant to build a campus-wide Center for Language and Innovation. The center will be dedicated to systematically promoting and supporting innovation and research in language learning and teaching. The center will help UA faculty, students, and units engage in cutting-edge collaborative projects and pursue internal and external funding.

RDI Faculty Seed Grant recipient Christina Diaz (Sociology) investigates whether the arrival of new immigrant populations in the US influence—and fundamentally change—social and cultural boundaries of the majority group. (Image credit: "Immigrant Family" Wikimedia commons)

Congratulations to Professor Jessica Maves Braithwaite (SGPP) RDI Faculty Seed Grant recipient. In their "Anatomy of Resistance Campaigns" project, Braithwaite and collaborator Charles Butcher (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will collect and analyze original data on political parties, trade unions, religious groups, and other societal organizations that support violent and nonviolent anti-government campaigns around the world. (Image credit: Braithwaite)

Edward Anthony Polanco (History), received the  Dr. Maria Teresa Velez Diversity Leadership Scholarship. This scholarship is given annually to a student who has shown a commitment to diversity. His dissertation research is on gender and medicine in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Mexico, drawing from both Spanish and Nahuatl archives records in Mexico, Spain, and the US. (Image: E. A. Polanco)

Brian Mayer (Sociology) is a Udall Fellow for 2017-2018. Brian’s research focuses on community resilience in response to natural and manmade disasters to improve local and regional capacities for adaptation to and recovery from environmental changes. (Image courtesy of photovoice project members and Delene King)

Cory Davis (History), a 2017-18 Fulbright recipient, is writing his dissertation on Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland and how they adapted to the very different religious and political climate of southwestern Germany in the late seventeenth century. This project seeks to add to the discussion about the challenges of acculturation that displaced peoples continue to face. (Image: Heidelberg Castle from Philosophenweg, Philosopher's Way, Davis)

Amanda Hilton (Anthropology) is a 2017-2018 Fulbright recipient. Hilton's project focuses on olive oil producers in Sicily, Italy, who recently won a Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) designation from the European Union. She explores the human-environment relationships that produce Sicilian olive oil (which the PGI seeks to protect), and whether and how the commodification of this food product is protecting producers and production practices. (Image: Hilton)

SBSRI dissertation research grant recipient Shiloh Drake (Linguistics) studies how English speakers, Arabic speakers, and Maltese speakers create words in made-up languages after a short learning period, and what this means for how we create meaning in language. (Image credits: Drake / Ussishkin)