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Population Center Hosts Bell Fellows
Now in its ninth year, the David E. Bell Fellowship Program
welcomes six new fellows to the Harvard Center for Population and
Development Studies. Each year, the center hosts a new group of fellows from the
US and abroad with the objective of preparing scholars, managers,
and policymakers in academic, public, and nongovernmental
institutions for leadership roles in developing countries. Funded by
the MacArthur Foundation, the Saltonstall Population
Innovation Fund, and other sources, the fellowships are named in honor of
David E. Bell, HSPH professor emeritus and former director of the center.
This year's fellows and their research projects are as follows:
Arachu Castro, MPH '98, a former consultant with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. She is currently consulting with the Population Council and serves as HSPH's Latin America coordinator for the reproductive health website. During her fellowship year, she will complete a study on caesarian sections and sterilization in Latin America. The project examines women's perceptions of their own fertility and of the risks of caesarian sections. Castro is also examining women's interactions with health care providers in Brazil and Mexico.
Eliane Gonçalves, a nutritionist and public health worker at Grupo Transas do Corpo, a nongovernmental organization in Goiás, Brazil, that she co-founded and where she has worked on educational activities in health and sexuality. Since coming to Harvard, she has been awarded a three-year fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation's Fund for Leadership Development. She is using her fellowship to conduct an examination of methods used in preparing schoolteachers to comfortably and effectively teach sex education. This year, she intends to study and analyze the changes in the Brazilian government's attitude towards sex education in schools during the 1990s.
Chu Junhong, a faculty member of the Institute of Population Research at Peking University, a World Health Organization collaborating center in reproductive health and population science. She is using her fellowship year to conduct a study on women's reproductive health and the reproductive health services offered in China. She is also developing policy options for China's State Family Planning Commission.
Rhoda Kanaaneh, who recently obtained her doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University. During her fellowship year, she will continue to explore work she began in her doctoral dissertation that examines the shifting dynamics of gender, class, nationalism, and reproduction among Palestinians in northern Israel.
Andrea Ledward, who has worked in Ghana, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe for the agencies Save the Children, The Partnership for Child Development (Oxford University), and SNV-Netherlands Development Organization. This year she will explore the possibility of constructing a child rights framework to be used in the implementation of health services during conflict and famine situations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rakesh Rajani, co-founder and immediate past executive director
of the Kuleana Center for Children's Rights in Tanzania. During his
fellowship year, he holds a joint appointment with the Human
Rights Program at Harvard Law School. He is developing and intends
to publish a practical resource packet on child rights, gender, and
democracy. The packet will include background documents, issues
and policy papers, learning exercises and cartoons.
The 1998-99 Bell Fellows (back row,
l-r): Susan Pedreira (program coordinator), Rakesh Rajani, Andrea Ledward, Winifred Fitzgerald (program director), (front row, l-r): Chu Junhong, Eliane Gonçalves, Rhoda Kanaaneh, and Arachu Castro.
