Abigail Jahiel

Illinois Wesleyan University Professor Awarded ASIANetwork Freedom Fellowship

April 14, 2003

Assistant Professor of Environmental and International Studies Abigail Jahiel was recently awarded an ASIANetwork Freeman Fellowship to support research by Jahiel and three of her students in China.

The fellowship, in the amount of $21,730, will assist the project that Jahiel and her students will be working on titled, “Towards Sustainable Development in the Chinese Countryside: An Investigation into Institutional Measures.”

With the current threat of the SARS virus in China, Jahiel is monitoring the situation closely in order to determine what impact that may have on her ability to conduct the research.

Jahiel, who joined the Illinois Wesleyan faculty in 1999, earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her doctorate in comparative politics from the University of Michigan. She has also lived and worked as a teacher and researcher in China several times in the past decade.

A consortium of almost 150 North American colleges, ASIANetwork strives to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education. The organization helps prepare succeeding generations of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles in an ever more interdependent world.

ASIANetwork seeks to encourage the study of Asian countries and cultures on college campuses. In a time of fiscal constraints, ASIANetwork facilitates conversations among faculty and administrators concerning the development and strengthening of Asian studies programs, as well as ways to foster collaboration among institutions.