This year, the Canada-US Fulbright Program received a record number of exceptional proposals, making competition particularly keen. Among the scholars selected to receive the Canada-US Fulbright Award for the upcoming academic year are York professors Isabella Bakker, Stephen Gill and Obiora Okafor, as well as York alumni Jacob Udell and Jacklin Tabar. In addition York University has attracted two Canada-US Fulbright award recipients from the United States. (See the Jan. 6 and the April 7 issues of YFile.)
Isabella Bakker has been a professor at York University since 1990 and the Chair of the Political Science Department since 2001. She is also a faculty associate at York’s Centre for Feminist Research. She holds a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York and has published extensively on the global political economy.
Right: Isabella Bakker
A visiting scholar at UNIFEM, Rutgers University, Free University in Berlin and the European University Institute in Florence, Bakker was recently named a 2004 Fulbright New Century Scholar. In addition to working from her home-base in the Department of Political Science at York, Bakker will spend five months as a visiting scholar in New York at the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women. (See the March 24 issue of YFile.)
Stephen Gill is a professor of political science at York University and is a leading scholar in international political economy. His publications include nearly 80 refereed articles and 10 refereed books, and his 2003 book Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Palgrave Macmillan) has been nominated for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and vice-president of the International Studies Association. (See the May 30 issue of YFile.)
Left: Stephen Gill
As a Canada-US Fulbright scholar, Gill will take up residence in New York University where he will research American world order strategies and how these strategies are connected to American society and the political economy. Specifically he will look at how recent shifts in American politics, civil society and culture are connected to the American military strategy, power projection and economic statecraft. He will also examine whether there has been a movement from a hegemonic world order strategy based upon leadership and consent, to a global dominance strategy based on supremacy and a more coercive use of power. Gill’s Fulbright research will contribute to a book he is writing.
Obiora Okafor is a professor of law at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and a faculty member of York’s Centre for Refugee Studies. He has twice been a visiting scholar at the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School (in 1999 and 2001) as an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow in Peace and Security in a Changing World.
Right: Obiora Okafor
He has published over 20 articles in peer-reviewed publications in the areas of international law, human rights and governance. He is the author of Redefining Legitimate Statehood (2000).
As a Canada-US Fulbright scholar, Okafor will take up residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he will analyze ways in which US refugee law and policy have been affected by the heightened sense of security vunerability after 9/11. Okafor plans to employ both primary and secondary research methods, examining case law and policy texts as well as interviewing government officials, refugee advocates and refugees. While based at MIT’s Human Rights and Justice Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Okafor plans to conduct interviews in two other major refugee-receiving cities in the US.
York alumni receive Fulbright honours
York alumnus Jacob Udell is currently a resident of internal medicine at the University of British Columbia. He holds an MD from the University of Toronto and a BSc in biology and chemistry (1998) from York University. Dr. Udell is a member of the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American College of Physicians.
As a Canada-US Fulbright scholar, Dr. Udell plans to pursue a masters degree in public health at Harvard University where he will undertake an analysis of American and Canadian health provision strategies. He plans to develop a health-care manager curriculum for resident trainees with a view to having it adopted by specialist training programs in Canada by 2006.
Jacklin Tabar graduated from York University with a BA in political science (2003) and from Osgoode Hall Law School with an LLB (2003). As a Canada-US Fulbright scholar, Tabar intends to pursue a master of laws in international law at Yale University. She will examine the extent to which international trade principles are being considered by the courts in Canada and the US. In particular, she will focus on international trade and intellectual property issues in NAFTA.