FRED H. BIXBY
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
2008 Fellows

After a successful application process, the Fred H. Bixby Fellowship committee met 31 January 2008 to select fellows for the 2008 year. The selected fellows epitomize the goals and objectives of the Fred H. Bixby Fellowship Program—to offer training opportunities to citizens of developing countries in order to strengthen and build capacity in their home countries. Two outstanding applicants were chosen, representing a range of research activities at the Population Council:

Ashish Bajracharya will finish his Ph.D. in policy analysis and management at Cornell University this summer. He will be working under the mentorship of Sajeda Amin at the Population Council’s headquarters in New York under the Poverty, Gender, and Youth program. His research interests are mainly in the area of child and adolescent well-being in the developing world, particularly as it relates to gender and family dynamics, labor, and income. His research at the Council will focus on the impacts of livelihood strategies of adolescent girls on delaying marriage in Nepal, paying particular attention to wage-generating employment outside the home, access to microcredit loans and savings, and the control over household resources. Ashish's project is aimed at advancing the literature on early marriage in Nepal, his home country, and also at informing program and policy strategies.

Erica Soler-Hampejsek completed her Ph.D. in demography from the University of Pennsylvania this spring. Erica has experience working in Mexico, her home country, as well as in Guatemala and Malawi. She will be mentored by Barbara Mensch and Kelly Hallman, and her fellowship will be situated within the Poverty, Gender, and Youth Program at the Population Council's headquarters in New York. She will study how schooling experience relates to the timing of sexual initiation, marriage, and childbearing, as well as the differences observed in the transition through schooling by gender and ethnicity. Under the mentorship of Barbara Mensch, Erica will approach the effects of several dimensions of schooling in Malawi on a selection of critical adolescent transitions. She will expand her research on gender differences in the schooling experience to differences between indigenous and nonindigenous populations in Latin America, with guidance from Kelly Hallman, focusing on the effects of availability of bilingual education (Spanish and indigenous) in Mexico.

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