Fulbright-mtvU Awards

Albulena Shabani
School: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Major: English, Political Science
Country Visiting: Kosovo

Albulena Shabani, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in 2010 with a dual Bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science, will investigate the repercussions of the 1999 Kosovo war and its effect on women in the region. Since the war, many women in Kosovo have been raped, are shunned by their families and are looked down on by their communities. By partnering with the Kosovo-based musical group Lira, an all-women’s singing choir, Shabani hopes to develop an open-mic series for women, while creating a film based on her experiences and research. Originally born and raised in Macedonia to an ethnically Albanian family, this project has personal meaning to her. As an immigrant who overcame struggles of self-identity and gendered expectations, Shabani hopes her project will help women of Kosovo do the same.

Jeff Roy
School: UCLA
Major: Ethnomusicology
Country Visiting: India

Jeff Roy, who is in the Ph.D. program of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, will create a documentary on how members of the LGBT community in India use music and dance to navigate tradition, modernity and globalization, in order to craft a contemporary, urban identity. Roy will base is work primarily in Mumbai, one of India’s largest urban centers, to examine how music and dance constructs and negotiates identities as sites of resistance and self-affirmation, within the context of social gatherings, political protests and religious rituals.

Katherine Cloutier
School: Michagan State University
Major: Ecological-Community Psychology
Country Visiting: Barbados

Katherine Cloutier will tentatively graduate from Michigan State University in 2014, with a Ph.D. in Ecological-Community Psychology focusing on Gender, Justice and the Environment. Her project aims to bring awareness to the prevalence of HIV in Barbadian youth by researching how they use music, dance and community-based performance in order to promote leadership and healthy sexual behavior. Working with students in six different schools in Barbados, Cloutier aims to facilitate change through dance4life, a global youth leadership movement. By creating community action performances in conjunction with local musicians, Cloutier’s orchestrated routines will include music, dance, and locally informed theatre in order to disseminate information on sexual health issues and promote youth activism.


Sebastian Modak
School: University of Pennsylvania
Major: English, History
Country Visiting: Botswana

Sebastian Modakholds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and History from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also minored in Music and African Studies. Modak’s goal is to form a collective group of musicians in Botswana who are committed to battling the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, in conjunction with local NGOs and health care professionals. He will be focusing on the thriving pop music scene in the country’s capital, which centers around a unique brand of hip hop locally referred to as motswako. Modak aims to create a documentary from monthly webisodes that will illustrate his experiences and research; he also aims to publish a compilation album that combines local hip hop recordings with those from musicians in the United States, which would serve as a tangible testament to the power of cross-culture artistry. Prior to becoming a Fulbright-mtvU Fellow, Modak spent two years living in Cambridge, Mass. working as a writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and playing drums in two Boston-based indie rock bands.

Kyle Inman, who obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Music and English Literature from DePauw University in Indiana, will work with Queen’s University of Belfast and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to highlight the powerful artistic steps Northern Ireland is taking to move past its troubled history and towards a more harmonious future. During her academic career at DePauw, she spread increased awareness of Northern Ireland’s culture and history through a Northern Ireland Awareness Week and the presentation of her thesis, “Portals of Truth: Musical and Literary Responses to the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland.”

Lauren Knapp, who graduated from Grinnell College in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology and global development studies, will document how popular Mongolian female musicians in Ulaanbaatar are using hip-hop to address the issues of a rapidly urbanizing society in the young democracy. She will also work with the Mongolian Arts Council to establish a series of music camps for young women and girls. Since graduation, Lauren has taught in Nanjing, China, and worked for “PBS NewsHour,” where she contributed to the arts and music coverage.

Jennifer Saura, who graduated from Harvard University in 2007 with a degree in Social Studies and filmmaking, will travel to Argentina to document music culture in and around Buenos Aires. With the support of the University of Buenos Aires, and in collaboration with several Argentine bands, she will explore the influence of contemporary music on Argentine individual and collective identity. Since graduating, Saura has worked in the movie industry and publishing, and spent the last two years at The New Yorker.

Meja Shoba, a film production graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s degree in English Creative Writing from Colgate University, will travel to South Africa to film a documentary exploring the ways in which South African youth use local kwaito music as a vehicle to renegotiate cultural and social identity in post-Apartheid "New South Africa." She will collaborate with a local filmmaker, DJs, kwaito artists and elder musicians to illustrate how music reflects and articulates South Africa's political transition and social climate.