SEA FLAS Recipient Jarrod Brown Part of Team Receiving Funding from NASA

Jarrod Brown (ABD, Comparative Philosophy, UHM) and multiple SEA language student (Indonesian & Khmer) was recently part of a team awarded a three-year research grant though NASA’s South/Southeast Asia Research Initiative (SARI), which is part of their larger Land Cover/Land Use Change (LCLUC) science initiative currently underway in South/Southeast Asia. For more on this initiative, go here.

Brown, together with an earth scientist at the University of Miami, Ohio and two scientists based at Goddard Space Flight Center, received funding for their study, “Land-Cover/Land-Use Change in Southern Vietnam Through the Lenses of Conflict, Religion, and Politics, 1980s to Present.” He will partner with a researcher at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, where they will investigate Hòa Hảo Buddhist environmental and agricultural ethics, developing an environmental history of their areas under investigation, and conducting and coding interviews which will then be integrated into an interactive map of the area. His science partners will be using high-resolution satellite imaging to track land use change as they test a number of hypothesis put forth in the grant proposal.

NASA funding will provide 10% release time for the next three academic years, as well as funding to support one undergraduate research assistant for three years, and three summers of field research in Vietnam.

Brown notes that “Happily, it allows me to seamlessly marry philosophy, the study of Southeast Asia, and develop new pathways in the digital humanities.” His work begins in summer 2018.