Summer Travel Grant 2018 Recipient
Michael DeAngelis
Student Affiliate
MA in Art History

My name is Michael DeAngelis and I am a third-year candidate for my Masters in Art History, with a focus on modern Japanese painting. I am in the process of writing my thesis on Kawabata Ryūshi (1885-1966), a Japanese painter, and his activities during World War II. To support my research, I received the EWCA Summer Travel Grant. This allowed me to travel to the Ryūshi Memorial Museum in Ota, Tokyo, Japan and view Kawabata’s artwork firsthand. This provided an especially valuable opportunity because of the nature of Kawabata’s paintings. Kawabata worked in a style known as nihonga (日本画), or neo-traditional Japanese painting, but innovated within the style by producing large-scale artworks with intense colors meant for the exhibition hall, called kaijō geijutsu (会場芸術). Because of the size of his paintings, details are not easily captured in photographs. With my firsthand observation, I was able to make important analysis of these otherwise unnoticed details. Without this opportunity afforded by the EWCA Summer Travel Grant, my thesis would not have been as thorough.

L-R: Ann Hartman, Clara Hur, and Layla Kilolu

Summer Travel Grant 2018 Recipient
Layla Kilolu
Graduate Degree Fellow
Master of Urban and Regional Planning

Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend the EWCA Conference in Seoul this year. It was a rewarding experience academically, professionally, and personally. I had the opportunity to present my resilience research and other activities that I’ve been involved with through the “Global Changemakers” panel, along with Ann Hartman and Clara Hur. My research in resilience is taking best practices from other international cities in the Asia-Pacific region, with the hopes that these best practices might be implemented in Hawaii to make our communities more resilient. My research has included case studies in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Melbourne, and San Francisco. In addition, I’ve been producing a music album that focuses on the refugee experience, with original songs written by fellow East-West Center fellows, in order to raise awareness on this global issue. This project has truly been a collaborative international effort and is reflective of the EWC’s mission to foster understanding among the Asia-Pacific. It was a wonderful experience sharing the diverse activities that I’ve been involved with, all thanks to the East-West Center. The conference also allowed me to meet many EWC alumni from all over the world, and I was delighted to see the camaraderie between and within the many generations present.

Summer Travel Grant 2018 Recipient
Eunsun Lee
Graduate Degree Fellow
MA in Second Language Studies

My travel during this past summer was made possible through the generosity of the EWCA Summer Travel Grant. From August 5th to 10th, I conducted fieldwork for my research in Nagasaki, Japan, where the 13th Japan-Korea Students Future Forum took place. The Forum was hosted by two partner student organizations called KJSFF and JKSFF. As a former member of KJSFF, I had the opportunity to sit in during the entire event to observe and record the participants’ interactional practices. 43 college and high school students from Korea and Japan got together to have group discussions and presentations on this year’s topic of “Collaboration in various fields.” I closely observed the entire programs, focusing on how the participants interacted with each other through the mediation of participant-translators. I also audio-recorded the participants’ conversations during discussions and presentations and took photos of them. In this Fall, I will analyze the data that I have collected during this field trip and hopefully develop it into a scholarly paper for my MA degree.

Summer Travel Grant 2018 Recipient
Dewi Setiani
Graduate Degree Fellow
MEd in Educational Foundations

I did an 8-week internship (May 28th – July 20th, 2018) at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia Embassy, Jakarta. I was assigned to the Governance and Human Development branch, specifically under the Basic Education unit of the Human Development section. My main duty was assisting the basic education team in implementing and supervising their program, which includes various tasks depending on the daily activities of the managers and officers. Several programs that DFAT does to improve education quality in Indonesia are INOVASI, The World Bank Trust Fund – IDTEMAN, and Technical Assistance for System Strengthening (TASS). The foremost area I specialized in was INOVASI or Innovation for Indonesian school children programs with several duties related to World Bank Trust Fund, and TASS.

Between June 4 – July 20, 2018 I conducted research in Singapore to record Indonesian domestic workers’ experience attending Indonesian school in Singapore. The participants were recruited with snowball sampling, then were invited to come to school at their convenient time to meet me. I visited the school on July 14-15 and interviewed 20 workers to hear about their motivation, feedback and other experience pursuing education at the school. The participants recruited were mostly enroll in middle school and high school certificate, with some attending university level courses. Overall the sample was representative and is currently being analyzed for my master plan B thesis project.

Thank you so much for your help and support.

Summer Travel Grant 2018 Recipient
Robert Moore
Graduate Degree Fellow
PhD in International Business

From June 25-28 I had the privilege of participating in the annual conference of the Academy of International Business, and my travel was supported in part by an EWCA Summer Travel Grant. This was my first time presenting a competitive research paper in the area of my dissertation research, and as such it was a big step in my academic career. At the conference I was able to discuss my work with journal editors, tenured professors, and distinguished fellows of the academy, and in each case I received great feedback and great ideas for how to extend my research in new directions. My presentation was well-received, and it sparked an interesting discussion among the audience and the other presenters about how business in times of war and war recovery might be different from business in times of peace. I received a nice surprise at the conference in that my paper was nominated for an award. It was the “That’s Interesting!” award, and, even though I didn’t win, it was still an honor to be nominated. Overall I had a great conference experience, and I thank the EWCA and Hawaii Chapter very much for their support.