May 12, 2023
Security studies student wins prestigious international fellowship
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
Kansas State University's Noëlie Frix, a doctoral candidate in the security studies program, has been selected as the 2023-2024 Albert Gallatin Fellow at the Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement in Geneva, also known as the Geneva Graduate Institute.
The institute is one of Europe's most prestigious schools of international relations and boasts a long line of heads-of-state, senior political leaders, and even a U.N. Secretary General among its alumni. Each year the institute selects one American doctoral student for the position.
Frix's work applies critical gender and sexuality studies to understand the Japanese government's complicated policies toward sex trafficking from the Meiji Restoration until today. Conducting research at the institute will allow Frix to deepen her understanding of anti-sex-trafficking policy failures and gain greater insight into how to remedy the problem, she said.
"My ultimate goal in pursuing anti-trafficking and gender-related research is to contribute to a more just and equitable world by offering expanded and actionable human-rights based policy recommendations," she said. "The real-world applications of this policy-driven research will benefit substantively and substantially from the institute’s engagements with intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and other governmental actors."
Andrew Orr, associate professor of history, said, "Noëlie's work is compelling because she is looking at how gendered constructions of identity shape the interplay of domestic and international politics. She is truly gifted at showing how political leaders seek to maintain domestic cultural structures even as they clash with the image leaders want to project of their country abroad."
She is also the recipient of a Japan Sociological Society 2021 Travel Grant and Jon Wefald International Security Scholarship.