Graduate student Robin Roff has been awarded a 4-year doctoral fellowship by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The award is similar to a NSF Graduate Fellowship in the United States.
There were 388 applicants and 129 fellowships awarded. Although the fellowship is from Canada, Roff will study here at UCSB. Her research focuses on the impact of place-based identity on perceptions of modern modes of agriculture (i.e., biotechnology, organic, and coventional methods). She will be examining how acceptance and rejection of agricultural types vary across and within spatial scales. She is specifically interested in what aspects of identity account for the wide diversity of perceptions between locations. Local and regional analyses will concern the United States, however she will undertake a cross national comparison of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the US. Even though she won’t receive any money until September 2004, she had already begun work.