Faculty

Vance Receives Rockefeller Award

The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a $250,000, four-year grant to Columbia University to support the new Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights. The Program is the brainchild of Carole S. Vance, Ph.D., M.P.H., an anthropologist in CSPH’s Division of Sociomedical Sciences and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Anthropology.

“This unique program will further the understanding of contemporary social issues, will advance innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship, and will promote dialogue between scholars and activists working on these vital questions,” said Allan Rosenfield, M.D., Dean of CSPH, in announcing the award.

Vance is the first CSPH researcher to receive one of the highly competitive Rockefeller Fellowship Program awards, as well as the first scholar in a school of public health to do so. Columbia was one of nine residency sites selected in a national competition.

Designed for postdoctoral scholars, advocates, and activists, the four-year fellowship program will bring together individuals who are working on pressing issues involving sexuality, gender, health, and human rights, in both domestic and international settings.

In the past, these issues have often been viewed separately. in the aftermath of the United Nations conferences in Cairo and Beijing, the advantage of viewing them in a more integrated way became evident. for example, linking gender, health, and human rights cast the need for HIV/AIDS education and intervention programs for women in culturally diverse settings in a new light. Similarly, efforts to integrate sexuality issues into reproductive health programs have broadened the scope of service delivery and policy.

These efforts are only beginning, however, and the program hopes to provide an intellectual location where innovative scholarship and activism regarding sexuality can be examined and integrated with work on gender, health and human rights. Through its residential fellowships and activities, the program will support scholarly work that expands the traditional definitions and boundaries of sexuality, while grappling with questions about diversity, inequality, and difference. in addition, the program hopes to examine new theoretical work in light of current practical issues raised by grass-roots organizing and political intervention, while promoting dialogue and exchange between academics, activists, and advocates.