The Institute for European Studies is now accepting applications for our Jean Monnet-sponsored Travel and Research Grants. Read about the application process at this link. These grants provide financial support for Europe-related travel and research projects to students and faculty at Indiana University. On February 27, four previous grant recipients who completed research in the summer of 2024 presented highlights of their research trips and gave advice to other graduate students who plan to conduct research abroad.
These graduate panelists were Chris Bowers and Monika Pendurkova from the History Department, and Nikolina Zenović and Ariana Gunderson from Indiana University’s Anthropology Department.
2024 Travel and Research Grant Awardees (L to R: Ariana Gunderson, Nikolina Zenović, Chris Bowers, and Monika Pendurkova)
Pendurkova put her grant award to work as she studied the “under-researched topic of women’s activism and participation within the Official IRA during the 1970s” and “the link between Marxist feminist ideas, global women’s movements, and the struggles for liberation”. She spent time during her research trip making personal connections with other academics and expanding her professional network. Pendurkova primarily spent time in Ulster, with Belfast being a main point of interest, and also spent time in Dublin. “In Belfast, the Ulster Museum, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and Ulster University were fundamental in gaining information and source material on the Troubles since 1968,” Pendurkova said.
Bowers is a historian of modern Italy, specializing in state surveillance of radical politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research draws on records from one of Italy’s largest state archives, Rome’s Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS). This creates a challenge for Bowers’ research, as the ACS holds over 152,000 personal surveillance files! Utilizing funds from his travel and research grant, Bowers returned to Rome in the summer of 2024 and visited the Archivio Storico della Federazione Anarchica Italiana (ASFAI) in Imola and the Biblioteca Franco Serantini in Pisa.
There, Bowers says he was able to consult materials preserved outside of state institutions and engage with scholars who have used similar methods to study political repression and state violence.
“These exchanges provided crucial methodological insights, helping me better contextualize the records in Rome,” says Bowers.
Describing his summer research experience, Bowers says that:
“By working with both state and anarchist archives, I have gained a deeper understanding of the organizations and individuals under surveillance – insights that state and police records alone cannot provide. This comparative approach has illuminated how the state constructed political threats and, in turn, how radical movements understood and responded to repression. These findings are continuing to shape my dissertation project and inform my own methodologies as a researcher.”
Panelist Nikola Zenović used her travel and research grant to carry out preliminary dissertation fieldwork on the island of Astypalaia in Greece’s Dodecanese. This marked her second trip to the island and allowed her not only to continue her research, but to reconnect with interlocutors and friends there.
Zenović explains that Astypalaia is experiencing increased engagement with sustainability, evidenced by the Smart and Sustainable Island project, which seeks to transition the island to a reliance on electric vehicles (among other pillars), as well as local sustainability-minded practices/initiatives. She says that her research “considers the different ways of talking about sustainability” in what she calls “sustainability discourses” on and around the island and changes in the island’s soundscapes.
“To explore these sustainability discourses and soundscapes,” says Zenović, “I conducted ethnographic interviews and participant observation and captured sound recordings and images of sustainability-related signage on the island.” Since returning to campus, Nikolina has been preparing for long-term dissertation fieldwork in Astypalaia and hopes to go back to the island and continue her research soon.
Ariana Gunderson also shared her experience conducting ethnographic fieldwork on fake meat production and consumption in Leipzig, Germany. “Though in the US we have Impossible and Beyond and of course Tofurky, in Germany the market for fake meat is truly huge,” says Gunderson. In Germany, she explains, you can find fake meat products such as vegan lox, fake canned tuna, and chili sin carne, which would be unusual to spot in a US grocery. Gunderson’s dissertation focuses on how tastes are changing as more and more people eat fake meat, and what the social implications of changing menus are.
Though these grant awardees travelled to different areas of Europe and explored unique subject matters, they all agree on one thing: some of the most valuable discoveries they made were not part of their plan! Bowers found that some resources described to him via email were not as he expected when he arrived at the archive and had to quickly adapt his plans. Zenović found that one individual that she thought would be a fantastic source of information was hard to access and interview. Yet, a chance encounter with a shop owner provided her with some of the most useful information she uncovered during her time in Greece.
Gunderson also had a happenstance experience that tied directly into her research. On what she planned to be a night off from academic work, she attended a performance of Kabarett sketch theater. She says she was gobsmacked when one of the acts was about an anthropologist studying meat in Germany! “It was a great example of enthnographic research,” Gunderson says, “you know never know when you will stumble upon a breakthrough”.
How should grad students prepare for these happenstance-yet critical-encounters when conducting their own research abroad? Bowers says to make certain that you are managing the power of your equipment and be certain to bring an external power bank or charger with you for your phone or laptop. When in archives or navigating the city, he often found his equipment would die by the afternoon. On one occasion, this necessitated his calling his wife on a landline phone to dictate important names to her so that he would not forget them on his commute home! Bowers also stressed the importance of bringing hard currency to archives and libraries, as he once found he could not purchase a book critical to his work because credit cards were not accepted.
Pendurkova emphasized as Bowers had that losing valuable content is
“the nightmare” experience when you uncover a valuable resource. She says that making certain you have access to at least a pad of paper and pen at all times is critical for this reason. Other tools suggested by Zenović are a physical voice recorder-not just your cell phone-and an interviewee contact and consent form.
All panelists emphasized being as open as possible to new experiences and sources of information. “Be as nosey as possible,” Gunderson says, “follow the thread and be willing to go out of your comfort zone to chase down a lead.” Bowers suggested cold-emailing well ahead of a trip to introduce yourself to potential sources and to inquire about what might be available at archives. He remarks that what you ultimately find there physically may not match your expectations, thus there is only so much practical itinerary-building you can do before travelling abroad. “Prepare to be disappointed, but just roll with the punches,” says Pendurkova, “some of the best content you will find will occur spontaneously, so make sure that you’re ready when that happens!”
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