Reves Announces 2020 Reves and Drapers' Faculty Fellows
by Staff
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February 19, 2020
Each year a committee of faculty and Reves staff awards Reves Faculty Fellowships and -- for the first time this year -- Drapers' Faculty Fellowships to support faculty-student research and collaboration on internationally-focused, engaged scholarship. The initiative is open to full-time William & Mary faculty in all academic units. Proposals are invited from faculty with significant experience in the international arena as well as those seeking to expand the focus of their work to include international, global and/or trans-national approaches.
The Reves Center for International Studies has awarded four professors Reves Faculty Fellowships for research in 2020. The Reves Center’s 2020 Faculty Fellows are: Shantá Hinton (Associate Professor, Biology), Jennifer Kahn (Associate Professor, Anthropology) Dana Lashley (Senior Lecturer, Chemistry) and Ranjan Shrestha (Visiting Assistant Professor, Economics). The 2020 projects are:
drapers fellows projects
2020 Reves Faculty Fellows
Shantá Hinton, Biology, “Continuation of 2019’s Fellowship: “Characterizing MK-STYX domain's role in cellular specialization”
Stress Granules (SG) are large cytoplasmic RNA-protein complexes that form under stress. When SG remain too long, they become toxic, disrupting cellular balance, possibly resulting in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Parkinson's, or dementia--highlighting the importance of understanding how SG are cleared. The 2019 Reves Faculty Fellowship enabled a Student-Faculty team to do research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. Their research demonstrated that the DSP domain of MK-STYX is the domain that decreases the stress granules. The investigation will continue in 2020 to obtain statistical analysis in exploring the molecular mechanisms by which MK-STYX regulates SG by addressing the following questions: Which domain of MK-STYX elicits the decrease in stress granules? Do MK-STYX, or truncated constructs bind to different proteins within the cell to decrease SG?
Jennifer Kahn, Anthropology, "Differential cultural responses to social change and ecosystem change in Polynesian chiefdoms"
Ethnographic, linguistic, and archaeological research has established that all Polynesian societies descended from a common Ancestral Polynesian culture. Thus, the varied forms of island socioecosystems of Polynesia reflect differential trajectories of dynamic interactions between island populations and societies with their natural environments, leading to new and at times radically transformed landscapes and emergent sociopolitical formations. This research project seeks to identify those characteristics and processes of island environments and societies which allowed some chiefdoms to develop substantial resilience, while others were transformed into states of high instability and in some cases collapse. The research will apply archaeological and anthropological approaches including zooarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology, GIS mapping, and excavation of rockshelter and ritual site complexes to identify prime movers leading to sociopolitical change on the island of Rurutu (Austral Islands).
Dana Lashley, Chemistry, “Concise Synthesis and Biological Testing of Natural Products with Potential Anticancer Activity -‐ an International Collaboration”
In the field of anti-‐cancer research, a wide range of natural products have been reported to have significant inhibitory activity on the growth of cancer cells. Thus, they represent good starting points for the development of effective drugs. One key requirement within the development process of a new drug is the easy access to the chemical substance, which constitutes the natural product. Although these compounds occur in nature, only small amounts of the natural product can be isolated from large amounts of plant material and other natural sources. It is therefore imperative to find effective ways to synthetically generate these compounds in the laboratory. The goal of the proposed project is the design and execution of novel and innovative synthetic methodologies to get access to bioactive molecules in sufficient quantities. In collaboration with Dr. Hamid Nasiri and Prof. Volker Zickermann at the University of Frankfurt they will attempt to synthesize quinone based natural products and subsequently test them against isolated mitochondrial complexes and cancer cells.
Ranjan Shrestha, Economics, “The Effect of Weather Shocks on the Incidence of Poverty in Indonesia”
Recent empirical studies have shown that weather shocks have significant effects on socio-economic outcomes such as agricultural output, labor productivity, economic growth, health, and conflict. Few studies, however, have directly estimated the effects of such shocks on the incidence of poverty. This study proposes to estimate such a relationship for Indonesia by evaluating the impact of temperature and precipitation anomalies on the incidence of poverty in Indonesia. They will collect and compile district-level data from multiple sources for the years 2002-2018 and exploit the variation in weather outcomes over time within districts to estimate causal effects. This project is being conducted in collaboration with Sudarno Sumarto, the senior policy advisor at the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) in Indonesia, and Pasita Chaijaroen, a former William & Mary economics faculty member currently affiliated with Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology in Thailand. TNP2K is already assisting with the data collection. Two W&M Summer Fellows will assist with the project.
Drapers’ Faculty Fellowships
A limited number of fellowships are provided through the generosity of the Drapers' Company. Founded over 600 years ago, the Drapers’ Company is incorporated by Royal Charter and is one of the Twelve Great Livery Companies in the City of London. Supporting education has been one of the primary aims of The Drapers’ Company for centuries and continues to be the main focus of the Company’s grant making today. The Company to assists schools, colleges and universities in many ways, from serving on the governing body to providing grants for scholarships, prizes and research. The Drapers’ Faculty Fellowship, administered by the Reves Center, provides support for archival research by the fellows, with the potential involvement of W&M graduate and/or undergraduate students at institutions in the United Kingdom. The recipients of the 2020 Drapers’ Faculty Fellowship are:
reves fellows projects
2020 Drapers' Faculty Fellows
Audrey Horning, Anthropology, "Transforming Narratives: Archives, Archaeology, and Community Engagement in the Drapers’ Company Plantation Village of Moneymore, Northern Ireland"
The archaeology and built heritage of the Plantation is contested heritage in Northern Ireland, where society remains divided into two demographically equivalent communities, broadly drawn as Catholic/Nationalist, and Protestant/Unionist. Today’s divided identities are understood to be rooted in the 17th-century expansion of British power over Ireland, expressed in part through the importation of loyal British settlers as part of the Ulster Plantation scheme in which the Drapers’ Company were notable participants. In the present, Moneymore survives as a small rural village, but very little archaeological work has focused on it. There is a high likelihood that extant deposits survive and that buildings may mask surviving remains from the early seventeenth century. The research questions underpinning this project include: What can archival and archaeological research reveal about the character of cultural entanglements on the seventeenth-century Drapers’ Company proportion? How can archaeologists best develop practice that contribute to peacebuilding in post-conflict societies?
Philip Roessler, Government, "The Cash Crop Revolution, Colonialism and the Making of Modern Africa"
The structure of the modern African state and its severe spatial inequality can only be explained by understanding the interactive effects of geography and institutions—in particular how soil suitability for cash crops, such as coffee, cocoa, cotton, groundnuts and palm, determined the spread of commercial export agriculture with the end of the slave trade in the early 19th century and, in turn, shaped and was shaped by imperial conquest and colonial state-building. Roessler and his team of William & Mary students have been the first to systematically point to colonial extraction and its effects on inequality and on gender and ethnic inequality and politicization of ethnicity. High-levels of spatial inequality are found to hinder a country’s economic growth and increase the risk of civil war—and thus may represent the root cause of the vicious poverty-conflict trap that affects many low-income countries, especially in Africa. The fellowship will enable extensive research into the colonial archival material at the London School of Economics’ British Library of Political and Economic Science, including migration data, ethnic censuses and first-hand accounts.
Previous Reves Faculty Fellows and their projects are listed online.
STYX domain's role in cellular specialization”
ecosystem change in Polynesian chiefdoms"
Products with Potential Anticancer Activity -‐ an International Collaboration”
Poverty in Indonesia”
Community Engagement in the Drapers’ Company Plantation Village of Moneymore, Northern Ireland"
of Modern Africa"