Advanced PhD Dissertation Fellowship

This is a $20,000 grant to advanced doctoral students in all fields, who have passed their qualifying exams and exhausted the initial package of funding. It is awarded to students engaged in dissertation research related to women, gender, and/or sexuality. One will be awarded per year. 

Check back for the 2026 application due date.

To apply:

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
The applicant must:
* be registered as a UB PhD student
* be engaged in dissertation research related to women, gender, and/or sexuality
* have passed their comprehensive examinations
* have exhausted their initial package of support from the home department
* be available to participate in a monthly works-in-progress workshop at UB
* not concurrently have another fellowship, such as the Humanities Institute dissertation fellowship or external fellowships

TO APPLY
Please submit the following materials :
1. 200-word dissertation abstract with title
2. four page double-spaced application statement, including:
   -description of the dissertation and its intellectual contributions
   -plans for the fellowship year
   -timetable for completion
3. a confidential recommendation letter from your dissertation adviser to be submitted to the UB Scholarship Portal.
4. a curriculum vita, including all funding received and future funding as a graduate student

Please submit all application materials to the .  Through the portal, invite recommendation letters from your adviser. The fellow will be announced in early May.

SELECTION CRITERIA:
* evidence of the dissertation's scholarly quality and significance 
* relevance of the research to expanding our knowledge of women, gender, and/or sexuality
* applicant's academic accomplishments to date and promise of future scholarly productivity

UB International as well as domestic students are invited and encouraged to apply.  The Gender Institute supports UB's nondiscrimination policy that "applies to all persons without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, gender, pregnancy, gender identity, sexual orientation, predisposing genetic characteristics, marital status, veteran status, military status, domestic violence victim status, or ex-offender status."

2025-26 Dissertation Fellow: Anupriya Pandey

Image of a woman with dark hair, smiling at the camera. They are sitting in front of a bookshelf filled with plants.

Anupriya Pandey is a PhD candidate at the University at Buffalo’s Department of Sociology and Criminology. As an environmental sociologist her research delves into critical caste ecological perspectives, focusing on chemically intensive vegetable farming in rural Bihar, India. Outside of academics, she enjoys cooking and sharing meals with others.

Abstract: The unregulated expansion of agrochemical markets in the Global South has profoundly restructured agrarian economies, reshaping labor, land, and environmental inequalities. How do these transformations intersect with caste and gendered social reproduction in rural India? This project develops a Critical Caste Ecologies framework to theorize the material and historical entanglements of caste, masculinity, and gendered embodied experiences within agrochemical capitalism. Through nine months of ethnographic and archival research in Bihar, India, this study demonstrates how the intensification of pesticide markets reconfigures agrarian caste and gender relations, generating both vulnerabilities and contingent “toxic” opportunities for Dalit farmers. Dalit men strategically deploy pesticide technologies to momentarily disrupt hegemonic caste masculinity, asserting agrarian authority while remaining ensnared in systems of debt and landlessness. Dalit women, sustaining cultivation through remittances, navigate paradoxical freedoms—balancing newfound agency with heightened exposure to environmental injustice and financial precarity. By delineating these uneven gendered and caste-based experiences of global agrarian transformation, this project advances critical interventions in environmental social sciences and feminist political ecology. It demands a fundamental reckoning with the ways caste and agrochemical capitalism co-produce socio-ecological harm, urging scholars to rethink how historically marginalized communities experience, negotiate, and resist toxic agrarian landscapes.

Past Awardees

2024-25
Iman Lathan, Educational Leadership and Policy

2023-24
 Srushti Upadhyay, Sociology

2022-23
 Hannah Ginn, Social Work

2021-22
 Alyssa Schwendener, Visual Studies

2020-21
 Dana Venerable, English

2019-20
 Maryam Muliaee, Media Study

2018-19
 Alexandra Prince, History

2017-18
 Elizabeth Masarik, History

2016-17
Molly Ranahan, Urban Planning, School of Architecture

2015-16
Kristina Darling, English 

2014-15
Averill Earls, History
Lara Iverson, Geography

2013-14
David Squires, English
Bincy Wilson, Social Work

2012-13
 Leah Benedict, English
Krishni Burns, Classics
Jessica MacNamara, Sociology

2011-12
 C. Michael Hurst, English
Katie Grenell, American Studies