By Whitney Hale

Sarah Gooch, a University of Kentucky junior majoring in Japanese language and literature with a minor in anthropology, has been awarded a National Security Education Program (NSEP) Boren Scholarship to travel to Japan this fall. Gooch is one of 161 award winners selected nationally from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants.

The Boren Scholarships provide up to $20,000 for U.S. undergraduates to study abroad in areas of the world that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad. Boren Scholarships are funded by the National Security Education Program, which focuses on geographic areas, languages and fields of study deemed critical to U.S. national security.

Gooch is

By Whitney Hale

Two students from the University of Kentucky and one 2006 alumna have been selected as recipients of Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships. The UK recipients are among 1,700 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2012-2013 academic year through the prestigious program.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign

Karen Rignall  is a finalist for the Roy A. Rappaport Graduate Student Award, sponsored by the Anthropology & Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).  A Rappaport Prize Panel Discussion will be held at the 2012 AAA meeting. Five graduate students have been selected to present a paper, and one of those selected will be awarded the Rappaport Student Prize. The paper  she will be presenting is entitled: The Aporias of Green Energy: Land, Sovereignty, and the Production of Solar Energy In Pre-Saharan Morocco. The paper is an expansion of her dissertation research on land rights and livelihoods in the rural south of Morocco and explores how Europe’s interest in renewable energy has created new forms of value in the vast steppe of Morocco, with problematic implications for local sovereignty