SJMC doctoral students, Timothy Arnold and Rebecca Obu, were among this year's winners of the Stanley Award for International Research. Read more about their projects below and check out the full list of winners here.

Timothy Arnold 

Trust, Communication, and the Politics of Vaccination in Brazil

“My international research examines how vaccination campaigns in Brazil and the United States build public trust through participatory communication strategies. Collaborating with public health scholars in São Paulo allows me to study one of the world’s most successful immunization systems from a comparative perspective. This work is important to me because I am committed to understanding how institutions can communicate in ways that include communities rather than simply instruct them. 

The Stanley Award will make it possible for me to carry out fieldwork in São Paulo, including interviews, archival research, and collaboration with Brazilian public health researchers. Direct engagement with local institutions is critical to understanding how participatory communication models function in practice and to producing a rigorous comparative dissertation.” 

Rebecca Larko Obu  

Digital Pathways to Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Case Study of Girl Power Eswatini 

“My research examines how adolescent girls and young women in Eswatini use a hybrid digital–physical health initiative to access sexual and reproductive health information in contexts shaped by stigma. Through interviews, I explore how digital platforms support sensitive health decisions. This work is important to me because it centers African womens’ lived experiences and contributes to more equitable, context-sensitive digital health interventions that reflect everyday realities. 

The Stanley Award for International Research will support my international fieldwork in Eswatini, enabling me to conduct interviews across urban and rural sites. This funding is essential to developing my dissertation project, refining my research design, building institutional partnerships for sustained international research, and advancing my long-term goal of becoming a scholar focused on gender, digital media, and health in African contexts.”