Posted: August 17, 2018

Contributed by Christian Scott, Ph.D. candidate in INTAD and Rural Sociology

Summer in the academic calendar can bring about a sense of malaise in a small college town like State College. This summer, however, one event served as an energizing reminder of just what makes Penn State and, more generally, international scholarship so rewarding. Earlier this summer I was lucky to attend the GRIT Global Gallery with the theme: Past, Present, and Future.

GRIT is the Gender Research and Integrated Training program where gender scholars from all around the world come together at Penn State to participate in a series of workshops that focus on gender equity and gender dynamics. The workshops are presented by Penn State, the College of Agricultural Sciences, and the Office of International Programs in collaboration with a through funding by the CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers. The gender scholars were all from CGIAR centers and presented their work at the Global Gallery in the form of lightning talks. Lightning talks are designed to be a series of rapid talks, in quick succession, with a strict 5-minute time limit and place a premium on brevity and clarity. I can attest, it is not easy.


The event included the opportunity for Penn State graduate students and faculty to interact with the scholars in a roundtable activity and discussion. The lightning talks were one of the highlights of my summer and featured a broad range of gender focused scholarship presented by passionate and brilliant scholars:

  • Gendered resilience from climate change was displayed with gendered dynamics in aquaculture manifesting themselves in issues of ownership and household divisions of labor;
  • Gendered factors contributing to low adoption of sustainable fodder practices;
  • Gender in rice based agricultural systems highlighting entrepreneurship, inclusiveness, leadership, and decision making;
  • Gendered decision-making adoption of agricultural technologies in Indonesia; Digital tools with gender in Sub-Saharan Africa;
  • Gender empowerment and water management in Ethiopia; Gender with participatory sorghum breeding in Mali;
  • Focus groups of gender in Indian aquaculture;
  • Sustainable development landscapes through gender empowerment and forest changes in Tanzania and Ghana

The above are just a sample of the great research highlighted at the event. The Global Gallery was inspiring, motivating, and fascinating and I'm glad I attended. I hope to attend more events like this as I progress here at Penn State and in my career focusing on development scholarship.

INTAD

Address

Melanie Miller Foster
106 Agricultural Administration Building

University Park, PA 16802

INTAD

Address

Melanie Miller Foster
106 Agricultural Administration Building

University Park, PA 16802