Sponsor: LASPAU Board of Trustees
Countries:Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia,
St. Vincent and Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, United
States, Uruguay, Venezuela
Program focus: Research grants
Timeframe: 1989–present
Description: The fund provides research support
to current LASPAU-administered grantees whose work encourages the exchange
of ideas, staff, or resources between institutions in Europe, the United States,
or Canada and those in Latin America and the Caribbean. The award enables
students to advance their research while strengthening international ties
between institutions, two endeavors that embody LASPAU’s vision. The
fund, named after former LASPAU executive director Lewis A. Tyler, is sponsored
by current and former members of the LASPAU Board of Trustees and by others
who support LASPAU’s
efforts.
More Information
The Fall 2002/Winter 2003 issue
of the LASPAU Informativo included the following examples of the
range and caliber of work of Lewis A. Tyler award recipients:
Diego Gil Agudelo, a Fulbright–COLCIENCIAS–DNP grantee
from Colombia, received the award for his research on the decay
of coral reefs, currently one of the most endangered ecosystems
on earth. Gil has focused his research on coral diseases, which
he believes “are one of the most important and least understood
agents responsible for the decline of coral reefs.” His
work is an integral part of the collaborative research being
conducted between the Colombian Institute for Marine and Coastal
Research (INVEMAR) and the Laboratory of Coral Diseases at the
University of South Carolina (USC). While conducting research
for his Ph.D in marine biology at USC, Gil has employed the
knowledge base of both institutions to more effectively study
the problem of coral decay and the prevention of coral disease.
The award allowed him to travel to Colombia in order to implement
an innovative technique that will help researchers better assess
the differences between healthy and diseased coral.
Luis Gómez Alpizar is
a Fulbright scholar from Costa Rica who is pursuing a Ph.D.
in botany at North Carolina State University (NC State). As
an award recipient, he organized a joint effort between the
Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) and NC State to study Phytophthora
infestans, a pathogen causing a devastating disease that affects
tomato and potato crops worldwide. By understanding recent changes
in this pathogen, researchers hope to more effectively manage
the disease and minimize the damage it causes. The cellulose-acetate
gel electrophoresis (CAE) system currently being used at NC
State is a fast and effective method of analyzing Phytophthora
infestans. With the grant, Gómez has been able to bring
this system to the Agronomic Research Center at UCR. Next year,
researchers hope to begin using the CAE system to characterize
the population of Phytophthora infestans in tomato crops.
CAPES grantee Marcos André Gonçalves is
working with researchers from the United States and Brazil on
the integration of digital library resources from Virginia Polytechnic
Institute (Virginia Tech), where he is completing his Ph.D.
in computer science, and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
(UFMG). Researchers at the Networked Digital Library of Theses
and Dissertations (NDLTD) at Virginia Tech and Brazilian researchers
from UFMG have recently begun a collaborative effort that is
funded by Brazil’s
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
(CNPq). NDLTD currently provides Internet access to student research
efforts and other resources. UFMG’s digital library utilizes
a highly effective web-based data extraction system. By using
techniques and resources from both institutions, researchers will
be able to network and strengthen their systems, ultimately providing
higher-quality access to a larger number of users. The award allowed
Gonçalves to travel with Virginia Tech researchers to
his native Brazil to participate in the planning and implementation
of this project.
Ricarda Riina, a Fulbright/Amazon
Basin Scholarship Program grantee from Venezuela, is creating
a database that will allow her to analyze the distribution patterns
of plants native to the Guayana Region of South America. The
region covers southern Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana,
and adjacent areas of Colombia and Brazil. Riina’s study of plant distribution in the region
is conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Instituto
Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas and the Universidad
Central de Venezuela and from the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
where she is currently pursuing a Ph.D in botany. The award
enabled her to make visits to plant collections at the University
of California, Berkeley, and the Missouri Botanical Garden in
St. Louis. During these visits, she met with leading researchers
in the field and gathered data that will aid her in her analysis.
By determining the location and frequency of native plants,
researchers are able to suggest priorities for conservation
efforts. The information contained in her database and analysis
will be important resources for ongoing conservation work in
the Guayana Region.
With the assistance of the Trustees’ Fund, Fulbright/Amazon
Basin Scholarship Program grantee Simoni
Benicio Valadares spent
her summer on the Uaçá Indigenous Reservation in
the Brazil–French Guiana border region. She is conducting
linguistic research that supports the current efforts by the Palikur
community to revitalize their traditional language. Valadares
chose this particular indigenous community because she believes “the
language is endangered, with young people shifting to the use
of Portuguese and the French-based Creole that serves as a lingua
franca between indigenous groups in the area.” Her demographic
and socio-linguistic research will provide reliable data for
researchers in Brazil and the United States. While completing
her doctoral degree in linguistics at the University of New
Mexico, Valadares is working to create a database of the Palikur
language, which will preserve it for future generations. For
more information on her project, see the research report below.
Research Report: Language Use in Palikur Speech Communities
in Brazilian Amazonia
During the summer of 2002, I conducted research
at the Uaçá indigenous reservation on the
Brazil–French Guiana border, in Oiapoque, Amapá State,
Brazil. The partial financial support of the Lewis A.
Tyler Trustees’ Fund and the Fulbright Program made
this project happen.
My research activities included updating the demographic
data available, developing a survey on the sociolinguistics
of the languages used in the interactions of Palikur groups
at the Reservation, collecting old stories told by elderly
speakers, and collecting audio-video data. The survey
was conducted with the assistance of bilingual teachers
through interviews.
The project had the support of the community because they
understand the importance of research involving the Palikur
language. I made some recordings of a language style that
they call “respectable language,” as advised
by the old people in the Palikur community who were consultants
to the project. Some old men and a woman who could speak
a style of Palikur language recorded their expertise so
that this style could be documented and described. This
style is not part of social interactions in the community
anymore but is used only by some speakers who are older
than 70 years and then only when they are faced with someone
who speaks it. This style is about to become obsolete.
Now all the collected data are going to be organized in
a database to serve as the dissertation proposal for my
doctorate in linguistics at the University of New Mexico
and for the long-term project of language documentation
for the benefit of Palikur communities.
—Simoni
Maria Benicio Valadares
Universidade Federal do Amapá, Brazil,
and University of New Mexico, United States |
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