
Aaron Su, sixth-year Anthropology graduate student, won the annual Association for Asian Studies East and Inner Asia Council Graduate Student Paper Prize for his paper, “Indigenous Feminism, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Eco-Politics: Conflicting Approaches to “Self-Sufficiency” in Taiwan.” The committee described that “Su’s deftly argued paper… argues that there is a paradox at the heart of participatory agricultural technology development in Taiwan: although Indigenous farmers are the primary target of agricultural improvement schemes across the rural East Coast, new participatory design programs are overwhelmingly met with refusal by Indigenous communities. Aaron Su is co-advised by professors João Biehl and Carolyn Rouse.
Timothy Loh, Lecturer in Anthropology and Costen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows, won the CASTAC (Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing) David Hakken Graduate Student Paper Prize for his paper, "An Expanded Istifada: Cochlear Implants and Regulating Communication for Deaf Jordanians.” His paper “examines the diagnostic and pedagogical practices of cochlear implant experts working with deaf children in Jordan. The committee appreciated the rich ethnographic prose accompanied by the well-organized and reader-friendly analytical suggestions, as well as the paper’s synthesis of supporting literature and concepts from linguistic anthropology, STS, and disability studies.
Aaron Su also won the Honorable Mention for the CASTAC (Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing) David Hakken Graduate Student Paper Prize for his paper, "The Dilemma of “Self-Sufficiency”: Indigenous Agriculture and the Limits of Scientific Collaboration in Settler-Colonial Taiwan.” The paper “considers contradictory and contested notions of “self-sufficiency” among state agricultural researchers and Indigenous farmers in Taiwan, amid precision-agriculture efforts to promote national food security. The committee was compelled by the paper’s extensive engagement with literatures around ecological knowledge and agricultural geopolitics, as well as the precise and evocative storytelling through which the paper unfolds.”
Congratulations, Aaron and Timothy!