John Brown wins Fulbright Student Award

Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 14:30

John Brown, a PhD student in the Department of Sociology, and an IRC Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright student award.

He will spend time in Tulane University, New Orleans as a Visiting Student Researcher working under the guidance of Prof. Eduardo Silva. Prof. Silva was the inaugural Maynooth visiting scholar in 2015. 

The proposed title for John's project is "The Challenge of Deepening Democracy. Post-neoliberal citizenship in Bolivia and Venezuela"

John told us "In this study I propose to examine democratisation processes in two post-neoliberal states – Bolivia and Venezuela. First, I will examine the extent to which national governments in these countries have enhanced and increased – or not – popular participation at the political and socio-economic levels. Simultaneously, however, I seek to identify and analyse counter-hegemonic processes by opposition forces at the sub-national level, to ascertain to what extent these local governments have crafted differing policies aimed at incorporating popular sectors into their political projects, or have adopted and perhaps modified existing policies emerging from the (left) national government to achieve the same thing. The project will also examine national level opposition policies for similar phenomena. In this way, not only do I seek to measure the extent to which left governments have moved these countries towards a radical democratisation paradigm, but also the possibilities that these moves may become institutionalised even in the case of the national state becoming captured by the opposition in the future. In other words, the project seeks to ask the extent to which increased popular political and socio-economic participation has been achieved, and the possibilities of it remaining as part of state policy in the medium to long-term, hence signalling a certain institutionalisation of post-neoliberal measures in contemporary South American democracies". 

While in Maynooth John is supervised by Dr. Barry Cannon, is a lecturer in politics in the Sociology department. Barry's research interests lie in Latin American politics, and he has recently published a book examining the responses of the right to the leftward shift in the Latin American region. 

Well done all.

We look forward to the photographs afterwards!