Current Scholars – Elliot Bertasi
Boren Scholarship – Elliot Bertasi
Senior Eliot Bertasi is the first College Scholar to hold a Boren Scholarship. Boren Scholarships provide funds to U.S. undergraduate students to study abroad in areas of the world that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad, including Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Elliot was admitted to College Scholars as a sophomore interested in studying governance, politics, and society in Africa, and in examining international relations between the US and African countries but has subsequently narrowed his study to eastern Africa, and in particular, northern Uganda. Elliot has now designed a senior project that examines the challenges of political and social post-conflict transformation, focusing on the relationship between the government and the community members in northern Uganda.
To begin his project, in the summer of 2011, Elliot studied abroad in northern Uganda with the Gulu Study and Service Abroad Program led by two University of Tennessee professors, Dr. Rosalind Hackett and Dr. Tricia Hepner. Determined to return to Uganda to conduct field research for his senior project, Elliot applied for the Boren Scholarship and to the School for International Training (SIT) program, Uganda: Post-Conflict Transformation in Gulu. Elliot was soon accepted to the SIT study abroad program in Uganda, and a few months later he received notice that he was to be one of the 2012 Boren Scholar recipients. The study abroad program is scheduled to last from September to December 2012.
Elliot spent the summer of 2012 in Uganda as a McClure Scholar, a program that offers UT students financial awards to support study/research/creative projects aimed at enhancing and promoting education for world responsibility. Elliot is the primary investigator for a research project which focuses on the challenges of post-conflict transformation in Uganda, and the role of political leaders and government programs in assisting war affected communities in the north to reach self-sustainability. His research mainly consists of interviewing civil servants, religious leaders, cultural leaders, community representatives, and beneficiaries to see how these government programs are working and also to examine the relationship between the local government and the community members.
As a Boren Scholar, Elliot will take classes in Gulu, Uganda, during the fall semester: Contextualizing Conflict in Northern Uganda, Post-Conflict Transformation, Acholi Language Study, and Research Methods and Ethics. His classes will be taught by various local academics, political leaders, religious leaders, war affected victims, and peace and conflict experts. Towards the end of the program the students will have several weeks to work on a self-designed Independent Study Project through which Elliot plans on continuing to work on his current and ongoing field research.
When Elliot returns to the United States in December, he will have one semester left at the University of Tennessee before graduation in May, 2013. After graduation, Elliot plans to move to Washington D.C. and work for a law firm dealing with international human rights or fulfill his Boren year of service by working for the Department of State. Elliot is then planning to apply to law school at Georgetown University, American University, or George Washington University. Elliot hopes to continue his studies abroad throughout law school and eventually pursue a career in international human rights law.